Recently I submitted a support request to Apple
regarding a behavior in Leopard, which did not exist
in prior Apple versions, and I'm confused how the
issue presents itself in NetBSD.

mkdir setup-XXX
chmod 555 setup-XXX
mv setup-XXX final

That's basically it. Would like to create a tmp
directory into which some project is setup. At which
point write permissions are removed and in one step
the directory is moved to its final location to
become available.

That worked on Darwin prior to Leopard, and it works
in some cases in NetBSD 3.1_STABLE

 geo@run:/home/geo/tmp mkdir setup-XXX
 geo@run:/home/geo/tmp chmod 555 setup-XXX/
 geo@run:/home/geo/tmp mv setup-XXX/ final
 geo@run:/home/geo/tmp cd ../
 geo@run:/home/geo mkdir setup-XXX
 geo@run:/home/geo chmod 555 setup-XXX/
 geo@run:/home/geo mv setup-XXX/ final
 geo@run:/home/geo mkdir setup-XXX
 geo@run:/home/geo chmod 555 setup-XXX/
 geo@run:/home/geo mv setup-XXX/ tmp/final2
mv: rename setup-XXX/ to tmp/final2: Permission denied
 geo@run:/home/geo ls -ld ./ setup* final* tmp/ tmp/final*
drwx-----x  52 geo  geo  6656 Dec 12 20:48 ./
dr-xr-xr-x   2 geo  geo   512 Dec 12 20:47 final
dr-xr-xr-x   2 geo  geo   512 Dec 12 20:48 setup-XXX
drwxr-xr-x  12 geo  geo  2048 Dec 12 20:46 tmp/
dr-xr-xr-x   2 geo  geo   512 Dec 12 20:46 tmp/final
 geo@run:/home/geo uname -a
NetBSD run 3.1_STABLE NetBSD 3.1_STABLE (NORUN) #1: Tue Oct 23 11:41:28 EDT 2007  root@run:/usr/obj/sys/arch/i386/compile/NORUN i386
 geo@run:/home/geo ls -ld /home
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  8 Feb 12  2006 /home -> usr/home
 geo@run:/home/geo mount | grep usr
/dev/wd0e on /usr type ffs (nodev, soft dependencies, local)

Of course root doesn't have the move problem, but
I'd like not to require root to atomically create
final. The downside of using the install program to
set the mode is portions of final will be in place
before the entire final is created.

Apple has responded to my support request saying
write access is needed to move a directory, per
POSIX.

Not having access to POSIX, I have to wonder if that
is interpreted correctly.  And if so, how does one
atomically create a readonly populated directory?
(without root)

How is the netbsd behavior explained that I can
rename the mode 555 dir in my home, but not if I'm
moving it to my mode 755 tmp at the same time?

// George


-- 
George Georgalis, information system scientist <IXOYE><