>> The fact that the syscall is capable of setting the suid bits which
>> are meaningless does not reflect on the fact that the syscall is
>> capable of setting other bits which are meaningful.

This is very true; I was going to say something similar.  (Realize
there is no separate syscall "set setuid bit"; it's part of chmod(2).
The setuid bit has no meaning for non-executable plain files; does this
mean it's STUPID to have chmod(2) capable of setting it?)

> Is the actual behaviour of _any_ of the mode bits on symlinks
> documented?  The normal description of rwx don't really apply,
> because, well, symlinks are and always have been special...

Actually, the 0555 bits are very similar to their semantics for
directories: the r bit means you can readlink() the link, the x bit
means you can follow it during a path walk.  (I think this happens only
if the filesystem in question is mounted with the symperm option, which
doesn't show up when you run "mount" because of a type size botch I've
been meaning to fix for a while now.)

As far as I know the 07222 bits mean nothing at present.  I've got some
ideas for them, some more implementable than others...when I get some
time I may do some experimental implementation work.

					der Mouse

			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
		     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B