Subject: Re: chmod on symlink Q
To: Matthias Buelow <mkb@mukappabeta.de>
From: Greywolf <greywolf@starwolf.com>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 04/30/2001 11:14:58
On Mon, 30 Apr 2001, Matthias Buelow wrote:

# Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 14:16:26 +0200
# From: Matthias Buelow <mkb@mukappabeta.de>
# To: Charles M. Hannum <abuse@spamalicious.com>
# Cc: tech-userlevel@netbsd.org
# Subject: Re: chmod on symlink Q
#
# Charles M. Hannum writes:
#
# >If it ever worked, it was a bug.  The current behavior has been
# >documented for at least 7 years.  (And I see no reason to believe it's
#
# Is there a reason for this to be handled that way in NetBSD (apart
# from, 4.4BSD does it so, probably)?
# It is contradictory with the chmod(2) system call, which does change
# the modes of a file a symlink points to and it seems to be different
# from other Unix implementations (at least those I've tried), where
# it does actually change the link target, as an innocent user would
# expect, imho...

This is a Feature of NetBSD -- a point where value is actually added.
IIRC, code was put in where we treat symlink permissions differently
than standard file permissions.  see symlink(7).

#
# --mkb
#


				--*greywolf;
--
*BSD:  Don't login as root, use the su command.