I've just begun downloading the JRE 1.5 RPM from Sun, in order to install it to my Suse 9.1 machine. While it's downloading, I started looking at the installation instructions. One of the first steps is to add the "x" permission to the downloaded file. I'm still somewhat naive and ignorant in the ways of the penguin (and weak on security in general), so maybe this is an obvious question to most of you, but WHY wouldn't the file be executable from the get-go? Of course, as I type this it brings to my mind the question of how file permissions interact with downloads - if I download a file from a webserver, do the permissions correspond to those on the original file (and how would that address different users/groups on the different machines), is there some universal method that the permissions fall out on the destination copy, is the result the same as if the downloading user had created a new file from scratch him/herself, or is there some setting somewhere that tells the OS what to do with downloaded files? Having thought this through while typing the message, I'm guessing the resulting, downloaded file, holds permissions equal to what the permissions would be if the user simply created a file from scratch. Feel free to correct me. AND, while I obviously have answered (I think) my own question and there's now no need for me to post this, on the offchance it does help someone somewhere, I figure I'll add it to the list anyway for posterity. Hopefully it will prove more helpful than detrimental in the long run.