Re: Bug in chown -- always kills suid/sgid bits.

Greg Alexander (galexand@sietch.bloomington.in.us)
Sun, 1 Jun 1997 12:48:31 -0500 (EST)


On Sun, 1 Jun 1997, Michael Stone wrote:

> > When changing uid/gid taking off the s-bit is definetaly the RIGHT thing
> > to do. It's much safer this way.
> > ie. I'm against that second patch
>
> I disagree; if you're root on a linux system, you can screw things up,
> end of story--the kernel shouldn't attempt to prevent people from making
> mistakes. Sometimes I need to change everything from one gid to another
> gid but I still want s and it's annoying when I have to go and redo it.
> BUT, in this case the behavior probably shouldn't change simply because
> people expect it to work the way it does and it might cause problems if
> it's changed.

Maybe a new syscall, real_chown(2)? The current chown is obviously not
correct. :)

Greg Alexander
http://www.cia-g.com/~sietch/
----
"I read about monkeys in the encyclopedia as soon as I got home from the
funeral and I wonder if this one throws turds and masturbates all the time
like those monkeys saw it the zoo in San Francisco or if witness monkeys are
more like people."
-- a character in Orson Scott Card and Kathryn H. Kidd's novel,
Lovelock.