topic Re: setuid on directory? in Operating System - HP-UX

setuid on directory?

W.C. Epperson — Fri, 30 Aug 2002 15:18:32 GMT

Is there any significance to the setuid bit being set on a directory? It doesn't appear to have any impact on anything.

Re: setuid on directory?

Rodney Hills — Fri, 30 Aug 2002 15:22:47 GMT

If you do a man chmod, you will find the following-

If the sticky bit is set on a directory, files inside the directory
may be renamed or removed only by the owner of the file, the owner of
the directory, or the superuser (even if the modes of the directory
would otherwise allow such an operation).

Hope this helps...

-- Rod Hills

Re: setuid on directory?

George A Bodnar — Fri, 30 Aug 2002 15:34:05 GMT

The setuid bit (g+s or u+s) on a directory will force files created in that directory to have the owner (u+s) and/or group (g+s) of the directory.

This could be useful to say force all files into a certain group or username regardless of who writes into that directory.

Re: setuid on directory?

W.C. Epperson — Fri, 30 Aug 2002 16:22:00 GMT

Rodney: That's consistent with my recollection about the sticky bit, but that text is not in my chmod manpages. Anyway, this is the "s", not the "t".

George: I thought that was the way in worked in my SCO Unix days, but by experiment, it doesn't work that way on my 10.20 or 11.0 boxen.