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Origins
Did file system permissions realy originate with Unix? Does there exist more background history somewhere?
A reader suggested the move of the initial permissions page to file system permissions. I aggread with that and added some more text in the document.
The section on Octal notation is incomplete. The first digit of a four-digit octal permission set denotes something. It might be the file type or the additional permissions. I'm not sure which, and I don't know what values would be acceptable.
Much of this terminology is conjectural. Any clarification or modification thereof would be appreciated.--Kbolino 00:21, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
The octal notation section is complete (note: 'Octal Notation and additional permissions' section). The first digit on a 4-digit octal permission is the suid/sgid/sticky bits. The section is worded in a dry manner. This could be cleaned up. I know that file system permissions didn't originate on Unix. Multics had file permissions as well.
There is a noticeable lack of the last octal group for suid, guid and sticky.
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jharr (talk • contribs) 14:38, 18 October 2006.
Mac OS X and Unix permissions
I'm pretty sure Mac OS X does use traditional Unix-style premissions. The core of the operating system (Darwin) is Unix-based and exhibits all the characteristics of a typical Unix system. When I repair my disk permissions, they are set to Unix style permissions. Theshibboleth 20:57, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Read-while-write
Read-while-write redirects here, but there is no deeper discussion on this topic. I also hear this phrase in other context than FS permissions, such as EEPROM and flash memory. So what does it mean? --Abdull 16:04, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
non-standard permission flags
I remember vaguely that I've seen some more exotic, non-standard permission flags as output of 'ls'. I beleave it was an e and a... Do or did such permission bits exist or am I deceived? --84.72.190.27 13:49, 12 March 2007 (UTC) (de:Benutzer:RokerHRO)
Hmm?
"Differences between operating systems"
Shouldn't that be "Differences between file systems"? — Omegatron 20:54, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
- Usually the OS sets the file system permission model. if a filesystem doesn't fit with the model of the OS (e.g. when NTFS is implemented on a unix linke system) then the implementation usually ends up without usable permission support at all. Plugwash (talk) 02:04, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
adding links to lsattr and chattr
they are indirectly related to permissions. --xenoterracide —Preceding comment was added at 23:16, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
INACCURACY: OS X leopard server has ACL's enabled by default
I just read in a mac support forum on apples site that OS X leopard server has ACL's enabled by default. This is contrary to the first paragraph's assertion that "all versions of OS X use POSIX permissions" and "no OS implements ACL's"
I don't know enough to research this further, and I'm afraid I don't know where on the forum I saw this... sorry.
What's mentioned here about VMS permissions is wrong
VMS has 4 categories (system, owner, group, world) and 4 "permissions" (read, write, execute, and delete) in addition to ACLs. I'll fix this later when I have more time. --betaneptune —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.191.171.11 (talk) 17:21, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
Why is the differences section first?
--betaneptune
Why it this so Unix-centric?
--betaneptune
Because no one has added information on other systems! DGerman (talk) 22:15, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
Why the complicated explanation of octal permissions?
Just put a '1' under each letter and a '0' under each dash.
Example:
-rwxr-x--x
111101001
This gives 111 for user, 101 for group, and 001 for other. In binary these immediately translate to 7, 5, and 1. So the octal code for this example is simply 751. Why all the extensive explanation of adding 4 and 2 and 1 and 100 and 010 and 001 and such? It's really very simple.
--betaneptune
simple if you know the ambiguity inherent in the radix always being 10 168.251.194.25 (talk) 17:49, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
Merge with share permissions (or not)
share permissions is the windows centric version of this which is the Unix angled one. I think there could be a generic article, and also specific ones for major operating systems. The names for these articles could be the terms used in those operating systems. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:09, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
That's just silly. You were thinking of ACLs, right? And that share permissions should redirect there?--JeR (talk) 13:10, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Packed permission bits?
I came to this page looking for verification of packed permission bit format, which as I understand it is a space optimization allowing two rather than three bits for storing each permission -- entirely abstracted away by implementations.
The way the optimzation works is, since go, uo, ug, and ugo permissions can be represented by (respectively) o, o, g and o permissions, those four are not needed and the four remaining possibilities for each of r,w,x can be packed into two bits instead of three.
http://www.cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/ntsec.html#ntsec-mapping describes a problem in attempting to map a posix permission of rw-r-xrw- into Windows Access Control Entities. I'm not certain that this problem is real, as it isn't clear that granting write to o but not g is possible. It would not be possible with a packed representation. 168.251.194.25 (talk) 17:59, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
It's "Mode" not "Permissions"
Unix, Linux and BSD files have "file mode bits" that collectively are referred to as a file's mode. See the man page for the command used to modify them: chmod.
Extended attributes are referred to as "attributes". See the man page for lsattr.
Kernel.package (talk) 04:18, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
These MODE bits define the permissions given to others, come on. DGerman (talk) 02:15, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
Standard permissions
Standard permissions I believe refers to read, write and execute for the three groups user, their group and everybody. Where as ACL's over ride standard permissions and often we need some sort of ACL inspector to determine the "effective permissions". These general characterizations help me better understand different file systems. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.174.98.26 (talk) 09:58, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
+ and . suffixes to the file permissions
The + suffix indicating an ACL is present is a significant security hole if not understood by users, and it's poorly documented and not widely known, so I've added links as clearly and concisely as possible to the bottom of standard permissions. Andy Henson. 82.152.115.137 (talk) 10:04, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
Article title - filesystem as one word
Why is the article titled with the single word "filesystem"? Surely file system is the more common term? Mitch Ames (talk) 12:23, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
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