[ On Saturday, November 30, 2002 at 10:17:20 (+0000), David Laight wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: standards/19209: test(1)'s -r, -w, and -x don't match POSIX for root (or 4.4BSD, or even V7)
>
> > > + 	euid = geteuid();
> > > + 	if (euid == 0)
> > 
> > I don't think userspace ought to be checking for 'appropriate
> > privileges' by checking uid == 0.  It is currently true for
> > netbsd but isn't portably true.
> 
> It isn't true for NFS!

What does NFS have to do with the privileges of a program running on a
given host?  Just because you're "root" on some host doesn't mean you'll
be "root" on some other NFS server.  Except for a few very special cases
the effect of root accesses to an NFS volume that's exported with client
UID==0 mapped to UID=-2 (or whatever) is effectively the same, from
'test's point of view, as it is for filesystems mounted read-only.  Test
does not, and should not, care about the filesystem mount options here.

> Additionally you have to use access() in order to detect
> readonly file systems.

No, you don't.  Please re-read again the text describing '-w' (and '-x')
which I've quoted twice now from IEEE POSIX 1003.2-1992.


> FWIW if a shell wants to know the file permission bits
> it can use $(stat -f '%p' file).

which standard is 'stat' in again?

A portable shell script can only use 'test' -- even one that requires a
specific 1003.2-1992 conformant runtime environment.

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

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