Is this a "corrupt" ACL?

[Art Wiens]

If I do a DIRECTORY/SECURITY in a particular directory, I get the following on a couple of sub-directories:

$ DIR/SEC $1$DGA53:[top_dir]*.DIR

some_dir.DIR;1 [valid_user_name] (RWE,RWE,RWE,RE)
(APPLICATION,SIZE=%D216,FLAGS=%X0E00,ACCESS=%X00000000,DATA=%X4641534D,%X544D4D43,%X41534DC7,%X45532446,%X52455652,
%X5320203E,%X46207465,%X65646E69,%X6E492072,%X69736976,%X20656C62,%X7962202F,%X43414D20,%X54584554,%X35323C20,%X2E37332E,
%X3E393432,%X2D323220,%X2D59414D,%X33303032,%X3A333120,%X200D3831,%X61656C43,%X69462072,%X7265646E,%X766E4920,%X62697369,
%X2F20656C,%X20796220,%X5443414D,%X20545845,%X2E35323C,%X322E3733,%X203E3135,%X4D2D3232,%X322D5941,%X20333030,%X303A3331,
%X53200D31,%X46207465,%X65646E69,%X6E492072,%X69736976,%X20656C62,%X7962202F,%X56444120,%X54584554,%X38323C20,%X2E34312E,
%X3E393432,%X2D323220,%X2D59414D)

Some sub-directories of this sub-directory also have that "info".

Vas ist das?

Cheers,
Art

[Bill Hall · Accepted solution]

Off the top of my head that looks like an old Pathworks ACE, circa v5. I haven't "seen" one in a while. I thought VMS suppressed the display of those application ACEs.

[Ian Miller.]

VMS V7.1 and later suppress pathworks ACE display by default - I can't check an earlier system at present.

[Art Wiens]

This is a VAX/VMS v6.2 system in a cluster and it shows this info. From an Alpha/VMS v7.2-2 system in the same cluster, it also shows this same info.

I believe the Pathworks idea is correct. I keep forgetting this environment was migrated to our cluster and we don't run Pathworks here. The previous site did run Pathworks and/or Pathworks for Mac.

Thanks,
Art

[Lokesh_2]

Hi Art,

Is HSM installed on your machine? I have seen similar type of ACL on files when the HSM is installed and these files are archived.

HTH,
Thanks & regards,
Lokesh Jain

[Art Wiens]

No, nothing that "fancy". I'm sure now that it's a Pathworks ACE like Bill suggested.

Bill, reply again and I'll assign 1 more point to top you up to 10 for that answer! ;-)

Cheers,
Art

[John Gillings]

Art,

An APPLICATION ACE can contain whatever the owning application wants. You should consider them to be opaque structures and just trust that the application knows what it's doing. There are ways to remove these ACEs, but unless you know what the ACE is for, you don't know what you're breaking!

ANY application can define and maintain ACEs on any file. Pathworks and HSM do it, but they're not the only possibilities.

FWIW, the data in the ACE you've posted is readable ASCII text. It looks to me like it's associated with serving the directory to MacOS systems through MSAF$SERVER (the Macintosh component of Pathworks). I suspect the ACE is being used as a quasi "resource fork" for the MacOS file system. The data listed is incomplete, but whats there contains an audit trail of setting and clearing the "Finder Invisible" bit by different applications.