On Sat, 2012-04-28 at 21:57 +0200, Stefano Lattarini wrote: > What system are you on exactly? I've reproduced this on a Fedora 16 x86_64 host. > Please send us the contents of the > 't/get-sysconf.log' file, that should report all the relevant (to > us) information and details about your system. OK, attached. > Also, what happens if you do this on your system? > > $ echo x > foo > $ chmod a-w foo > $ test ! -w foo || echo still writable > $ (echo y > foo) && echo can write to unwritable > $ cat foo As root I see: # echo x > foo # chmod a-w foo # test ! -w foo || echo still writable still writable # (echo y > foo) && echo can write to unwritable can write to unwritable # cat foo y As a regular user, I see: $ echo x > foo $ chmod a-w foo $ test ! -w foo || echo still writable $ (echo y > foo) && echo can write to unwritable bash: foo: Permission denied $ cat foo x This is as I'd expect, as root can always write to a file, regardless of permissions. Due to our particular build environment, automake is built and tested as the root user in a chroot environment. Regards, Matt.