Subject: bug#819: 23.0.60; group and owner "Everyone" - what's that about?

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:56:24 +0300

> Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:15:09 +0300
> From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
> Cc: [email-masked]
> 
> > From: "Drew Adams" <[email-masked]>
> > Cc: <[email-masked]>, "'Eli Zaretskii'" <[email-masked]>
> > Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:29:15 -0700
> > 
> > sorry for the noise.
> 
> Wait with that apology; I might find some Emacs bug after all.  Stay
> tuned.

OK, I think I know what is going on.  You are using an Emacs 23 binary
that was built before Aug 15 this year, right?

If so, there was a bug in the code back then which would manifest
itself when w32-get-true-file-attributes was at its default value
`local'.  The bug would cause Emacs to think that every file except
the root directory on each local drive was not local, and therefore
Emacs would not try to retrieve the file's security descriptor and
glean the owner and group from that.  Instead, Emacs would fall back
on attributing each file to the user who runs Emacs.

This is why you see the root directory owned by "Everyone", while the
rest of files are not.

To see if my theory is right, either install a binary built after Aug
15, or set w32-get-true-file-attributes to t and do a Dired on C:\.
If I'm right, you will see each and every file attributed to Everyone,
like I'd expect on a FAT32 volume.