Re: Bug in chown -- always kills suid/sgid bits.
Keith Rohrer (kwrohrer@uiuc.edu)
Sun, 1 Jun 1997 18:48:13 -0500 (CDT)
> Quoting Andi Gutmans (andi@vipe.technion.ac.il):
> > 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.
I support the current behavior because it's clearly the right thing to do
for normal users, and because it shouldn't be different for root than for
anyone else (who is allowed to perform the operation in the first place).
Keith