From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Oct 26 18:34:56 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from copland.udel.edu (copland.udel.edu [128.175.13.92]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4E8EC14FE2 for ; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 18:34:54 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from papalia@UDel.Edu) Received: from morgaine.avalon.com (host75-157.student.udel.edu [128.175.75.157]) by copland.udel.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id VAA22005 for ; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 21:35:22 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <4.1.19991026211759.009434a0@mail.udel.edu> X-Sender: papalia@mail.udel.edu X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 21:35:07 -0400 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org From: John Subject: Stickybit (Was: Permissions for users in general) In-Reply-To: <26526.940948091@axl.noc.iafrica.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG A slighty very much unix newbie question, but... I've never fully understood what the sticky bit is supposed to do? I pulled out the Red-covered SysAdmin book (by Evi Nemeth, etc), and they seem to at first say that the sticky bit is an ancient relic and is ignored by 'modern kernels'. They then go on to say that if it's set on a directory that it prevents you from deleting or renaming files unless you're the owner of the directory, file, or the su. Trying to understand that... does that mean that pretty much the permissions of the 'group' and 'other' have no bearing or point if the sticky bit is set? (ie: if set to -rwxrwxrwx with the sticky bit on, does that mean still only the owner can erase? not even a group member?) Just another nuance to try to understand :) Thanks in advance, John >> vi gave me the message: Permission denied: Modifications not >> recoveralble if session fails. > >It's probably having trouble creating a recovery file, which is useful >if your system dies while you're messing around with a file. You >should check the permissions of your /tmp and /var/tmp/vi.recover >directories. The default is sticky world writable, owned by >root:wheel. You can "make it so" with these commands: > > chown root:wheel /tmp /var/tmp/vi.recover > chmod 01777 /tmp /var/tmp/vi.recover > >Ciao, >Sheldon. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message