Subject: Re: clearing suid/sgid bits upon ownership change
To: Rob Windsor <windsor@warthog.com>
From: Frank van der Linden <frank@wins.uva.nl>
List: current-users
Date: 12/10/1997 09:54:09
On Tue, Dec 09, 1997 at 01:25:03PM -0600, Rob Windsor wrote:
> what it does:
> 
> Clears any suid or sgid bits if owner or group changes.  Even something
> insane like clearing the suid bit if you change the group ownership.
> 
> 
> what I think about it:
> 
> This sucks.  Please #ifdef it or change it so that this appears when
> securelevel >1. I can't stand this behavior.  No other modern un*x in the
> world does this insane crap.  I just love `surprises' like this in NetBSD --
> not.

No other modern Unix does this? Systems have been doing this for quite a
while now. To be sure I just checked:

	- Solaris
	- SunOS
	- AIX
	- Irix

..and they all do it. Linux does it as well as far as I can see,
only it only removes the matching sgid/suid pairs. But the source I'm
looking at is a bit old, perhaps that has changed. BSD/OS seems to
behave that way as well.

So, if NetBSD did NOT do it before, it was about the only system
in existance that didn't, probably..

- Frank