The Tuesday 2005-02-01 at 16:20 -0800, Randall R Schulz wrote:
The sticky bit has two interpretations, one ancient and, I think, obsolete and the other newer and still relevant:
yes, I saw that.
1/old) The executable text (instructions) of pure binary executables with their sticky bit set remain in the swap space even when no process is executing them. Then instead of recreating their core image from scratch (from the executable file contents) the next time that program is executed, it can simply be swapped in again.
2/new) Directories whose sticky bit is set can be made writable by all while allowing only the owner of a file to remove it (more precisely, a directory entry referring to it) from that directory.
As ever, root is not subject to the restriction created by the second use of the sticky bit.
So I don't see how making /dev or a device entry therein sticky is going to have any actual effect on the operation of the system.
I tried to test it, as user, and I can't even set the sticky bit for the owner: cer@nimrodel:~/tmp> touch test cer@nimrodel:~/tmp> chmod u+t test cer@nimrodel:~/tmp> l test -rw-r--r-- 1 cer users 0 2005-02-03 02:04 test cer@nimrodel:~/tmp> rm test cer@nimrodel:~/tmp> l test /bin/ls: test: No such file or directory Same result for a directory, and the same as root, I can not create sticky files/dirs, for the owner. It only applies to "others": cer@nimrodel:~/tmp> chmod o+t test cer@nimrodel:~/tmp> l test -rw-r--r-T 1 cer users 0 2005-02-03 02:07 test cer@nimrodel:~/tmp> chmod g+t test cer@nimrodel:~/tmp> l test -rw-r--r-T 1 cer users 0 2005-02-03 02:07 test This is not mentioned in the manual, that was what missled me: The letters `rwxXstugo' select the new permissions for the affected users: read (r), write (w), execute (or access for directories) (x), execute only if the file is a direc tory or already has execute permission for some user (X), set user or group ID on execution (s), sticky (t), the permissions granted to the user who owns the file (u), the permissions granted to other users who are members of the file's group (g), and the permissions granted to users that are in neither of the two preceding categories (o). -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson