GNU bug report logs - #8391
chmod setuid & setguid bits

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From: Erik Auerswald <auerswal <at> unix-ag.uni-kl.de>
To: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
Cc: Christian <chris <at> computersalat.de>, bug-coreutils <at> gnu.org
Subject: bug#8391: chmod setuid & setguid bits
Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2011 11:10:45 +0200

Hi,

On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 11:54:26AM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
> On 03/31/2011 11:25 AM, Christian wrote:
> > and using "0755" is explicit enough, isn't it ?
> 
> Unfortunately it's not that simple, as having 0755 mean
> something different from 755 would violate the principle
> of least surprise.

I am very surprised that explicitly specifying 0 for SUID, SGID, sticky is
silently ignored.

> Please see the thread starting at
> <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2006-07/msg00124.html>.

Quoting from that message:
>   set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them.  If
>   you want to clear the bits you can mention them explicitly, e.g.,
>   `chmod 0755 DIR' and `chmod a-s,u=rwx,go=rx DIR'.
     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

How could one be more explicit?

Paul Eggert seemed to agree:
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2006-07/msg00125.html>
>   However, I would argue that this is more confusing than
>   what we've got right now, since "chmod 0755 DIR" clearly requests to
>   clear the setgid bit.

Jim Meyering disagreed:
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2006-07/msg00128.html>
>   Treating that leading '0' as significant violates the principle of
>   least surprise.  Not to say that everyone who uses chmod(1) even knows
>   what an octal number is, but enough of us are used to that leading zero
>   being insignificant that I think it should remain negligible.
> [...]
>   To me, it's not a clear request to clear the setgid bit.

Eric Blake suggested a weird looking (to me anyway ;) solution:
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2006-07/msg00130.html>
>   Should we document "chmod 00500 dir" as an explicit way to clear the
>   bit, or just require a textual mode string?

Furthermore, it was found that vendor's implementations of chmod surprise
in different ways.

I'd suggest adding a warning if chmod (and possibly other utils) encounter
an octal mode number with leading 0, as that might mean 'octal' or 'zero'.
I'd definitely prefer interpreting the leading 0 as a zero for the
SUID/SGID/sticky bits, but coreutil's viewpoint obviuosly differs...

Regards,
Erik
-- 
If you don't know what you are doing, advance designs will not help.
                        -- Eric Allman

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