GNU bug report logs - #819
23.0.60; group and owner "Everyone" - what's that about?

Previous Next

Full log

View this message in rfc822 format

From: "Drew Adams" <drew.adams <at> oracle.com>
To: "'Eli Zaretskii'" <eliz <at> gnu.org>, <819 <at> debbugs.gnu.org>
Cc: <emacs-pretest-bug <at> gnu.org>, <bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org>
Subject: bug#819: 23.0.60; group and owner "Everyone" - what's that about?
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:12:35 -0700

> > emacs -Q
> > Dired on a subdir of, say, c:\
> >  
> > .. has the owner and group listed as "Everyone". What's 
> > that about? If I click `..', I see that none of the files or
> > subdirectories in c:\ belong to "Everyone" (in my case). That
> > "Everyone" artifact is incorrect and misleading.
> 
> You interpret "Everyone" too literally.  "Everyone" is the Windows way
> of attributing a file's ownership to no one in particular.  This is
> what you will see for each and every file on a FAT32 volume, because
> FAT32 does not support file security, only NTFS does.
> 
> So "Everyone" is not an artefact, it's what Windows reports to Emacs
> as the owner and primary group of a file or directory.

In Emacs 23, it's not what I see in Dired for the other files and directories,
besides `..'. In my case, I see my user name as the owner for each entry except
`..', and I see `None' as the group for each entry except `..'.

In Emacs 22, I see my user name as the owner for each entry (including `..') and
`root' as the group for each entry (including `..'). In Emacs 20, I see my user
name as the owner for each entry (including `..') and `5' as the group for each
entry (including `..').

IOW, before Emacs 23, (1) `..' was not treated differently from other entries
and (2) the group was not `None'. Change #2 seems OK to me, but I don't
understand #1: Why should `..' be different? 

And why should following the link `..' show something different from what was
shown for `..' in the subdir? The properties of a given directory should always
appear the same, regardless of where you are viewing them.

> That said, I cannot reproduce this on my machine, with NTFS
> filesystem: each file and directory I see belongs to some valid user
> or group, and in particular all subdirectories of c:\ have
> "Administrators" as the owner of ".." and "SYSTEM" as its primary
> group.  That is what I'd expect on a typical Windows machine with NTFS
> filesystem.

My hard disk is formatted FAT32, not NTFS.

> So what you see is some strange peculiarity of your system, I think.
> Perhaps because you upgraded your filesystem from FAT32?

No. It was and is still FAT32.

> In any case, "Everyone" is a legitimate value of a Windows owner
> and/or primary group of a file.

Whatever is used should be consistent: (1) `..' shouldn't be special, and (2)
`..' should show the same properties (owner group) as what is shown for it when
you follow the `..' link - the directory's properties should not change
depending on where you are looking at them.

Previous Next

GNU bug tracking system
Copyright (C) 1999 Darren O. Benham, 1997,2003 nCipher Corporation Ltd, 1994-97 Ian Jackson.