Subject: Re: bug#865: 23.0.60; The directory is unsafe today

From: Francis Litterio <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:08:36 -0400

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

>> From: Francis Litterio <[email-masked]>
>> 
>> Could a Windows file owned by a group be mapped to POSIX by showing the
>> Windows group as the POSIX group owner and a pseudo-user (e.g., nobody,
>> root, emacs) as the user owner?
>
> How will this help the following code work on Windows, when the owner
> of the file is reported as the Administrators group (whose ID is 544),
> and the UID of the user who created the file is different (because she
> belongs to the local admins group)?
>
>   (or (eql (nth 2 (file-attributes FILE)) (user-uid))
>       (scream-bloody-murder))

My suggestion wouldn't help in this case, because it would cause (nth 2
(file-attributes ...)) to return a value that does not match any
existing user.

But if Windows says the file is owned by the Local Administrators group,
hasn't the information about which user created it been lost?  The file
is not truly owned by any single user.

Thus, (nth 2 (file-attributes ...)) can never return a meaningful
existing user ID for a file that is owned by a group.
--
Fran