I just came across this annoying problem myself recently.  Since I haven't
been keeping up with -current lately, I was wondering if this problem has
been fixed and integrated?

Intuitively, I would think that if an msdos filesystem was mounted with the
'noexec' option, then regular files should not have their execute
permission bits set, but directories should be left alone.  But the files
still have x indicated, even though you can't run them.  This is really
most annoying when I NFS export directories to my NeXT system, which tries
to execute any msdos file I open regardless of permissions.  Setting the
mask option is no good, because then I can't read directories.

If giving separate permissions to files and directories with the noexec
option would be too inconsistent with other filesystems, perhaps we should
consider adding another option flag just to msdosfs ... perhaps dmask
and/or fmask?

-----------------------
Trevin Beattie          "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards,
trevin@xmission.com     for you are crunchy and good with ketchup."
      {:->                                     --unknown