Subj : This is why FreeBSD...
To   : Angus Mcleod
From : Jasen Betts
Date : Mon Aug 23 2004 10:08 am

Hello Angus.

13 Aug 04 13:28, you wrote to all:

 AM>     $ echo "Hello world" > hello.text
 AM>     $ ls -l hello.txt
 AM>     -rw-r--r--  1 amcleod  anjo  6 Aug 13 15:27 hello.text
 AM>     chown freddy hello.text
 AM>     chown: hello.text: Operation not permitted
 AM>     $ man chown

 AM>     CHOWN(8)            FreeBSD System Manager's Manual
 AM> CHOWN(8)

 AM>     NAME
 AM>         chown - change file owner and group
 AM>     .   .   .
 AM>     The ownership of a file may only be altered by a super-user for
 AM> obvious
 AM>     security reasons.

 AM> What rubbish!

have you heard of the setuid bit?  What it means is that if you can "give" 
files to others you (and others) can also assume their identity.

 AM>   So the OWNER of the file is not allowed to give it to
 AM> someone else?  WTF is write permissions for if not to decide who can
 AM> modify the file, such as changing ownership?

If you want to share the data with another you can make it available to them by 
using the group or global read-write permissions, mail(1)-ing it to them, or 
sharing your password with them etc. (not reccomended).

The system administrator can create small groups for file-sharing purposes
so that users working on "blarg" can be in the "blarg-dev" group
and users working on "foo" can be in "foo-dev", any individual user can be a 
member of an unlimited number of groups.

The umask and newgrp commands effect the permissions and group-id that new 
files are given.

Jasen

--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.4.7
 * Origin:  (3:640/1042)

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