From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-Id: <200309220206.h8M267j02291@augusta.math.psu.edu> To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] permission bit of /mail/box In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 21 Sep 2003 21:40:49 EDT." From: Dan Cross Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2003 22:06:07 -0400 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 3f759e50-eacc-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 Dave wrote: > There's nothing wrong with having directories anyone can do anything in. And then I wrote: > With qualifiers. It depends on who's doing those things. Or, perhaps > more importantly, how much you trust them. And then David Presotto writes: > Actually, I meant it without qualifiers. We have 2^9 possible permissions. > One of them is to allow anyone (that can attach the fs) to do anything. I > can see when that's a useful thing. For the /mail/box directory its a bit > too much. Geoff Collyer suggested making the 'a' bit on directories mean > that you can't rename files (ala unix sticky bit?). I wouldn't mind that > for the mail directory. Ahh, I think we're talking at cross-purposes. I see now what you mean, or at least I think I do: there's nothing wrong with being able to create directories that anyone can do anything in. I thought you meant there was nothing wrong with having directories that anyone can do anything in on any given system. Clearly, there are some systems where such directories would not be desired, even though the possibility exists to create them. - Dan C. (As an aside, thinking about this lead to a nice mental diversion on pondinger the ambiguities inherent in the English language, and how much we lose when we communicate in such a way that body langage, tone of voice, etc disappear.)