[CLUE-Tech] Directory permissions -- problems with "-w--w--w-"

[Jed S. Baer]

On Wed, 22 May 2002 13:00:38 -0400
"Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier" <jzb at dissociatedpress.net> wrote:

> bof wrote:
> 
> > But when I changed the directory permissions to -w--w--w-,  I could
> > not add a new file or delete any of the existing files, getting a 
> 
> As I understand it, this is because a utility cannot write a file to a 
> directory unless it can "see" (r) the files in the directory and the 
> same goes for deleting a file. For example, rm returns an error if you 
> try to remove a file that does not exist. The first thing it does 
> (AFAIK) is to "look" to see if the file in fact exists before attempting
> to remove it, then checks the permissions before trying to remove it and
> finally, it will actually remove it if test 1 and test 2 have passed. If
> file does not exist, error. If file exists but you do not have 
> sufficient permissions, error. It must read the file before it can 
> decide this, though. I imagine that most of the other GNU utilies 
> perform the same checks.

Well, I hope it isn't actually the rm program doing this. It should be
handled further down someplace in the software stack, perhaps in the IO
library for the filesystem.

jed
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