From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: wb@freebie.xs4all.nl (Wilko Bulte)
Date: Wed, 21 May 2008 08:15:15 +0200
Subject: [TUHS] Early UNIX file permission oddity
In-Reply-To: <20080521043224.GA32712@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20080521043224.GA32712@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <20080521061515.GA73871@freebie.xs4all.nl>

Quoting Warren Toomey, who wrote on Wed, May 21, 2008 at 02:32:24PM +1000 ..
> I was just browsing through the 1974 UNIX CACM paper, the one that first
> publicly described the design and functionality of UNIX. I came across
> some sentences which describe the file permissions, and they sounded quite odd:
> 
>   When a file is created, it is marked with the user ID of its owner.
>   Also given for new files is a set of seven protection bits.
>   Six of these specify independently read, write, and execute permission
>   for the owner of the file and for all other users. [The seventh bit
>   is the set-user-id bit. ]
> 
> This seems to indicate that there are "rwx" bits for owner, "rwx" bits for other,
> and no "rwx" bits for group. I've never seen a UNIX system with 6 file
> permission bits, so I thought I would poke around to see what I could find. It

Well, I have a UNIX-like system sitting in my basement that has this.  This
is a TSC Uniflex system running on a Motorola MC6809 CPU.  8 bit CPU in
other words.

..

Wilko