unix permissions questions

[doug at safeport.com]

On Tue, 14 Sep 2010, Chuck Swiger wrote:

> On Sep 14, 2010, at 11:01 AM, Polytropon wrote:
>> On Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:32:40 -0400 (EDT), doug at safeport.com wrote:
>>> I found several directories whose permissions where set to
>>>
>>>   dr-s--S--T   2 user group   512 Feb 22  2010 .procmail/
>>>
>>> All were .procmail which is what we set for procmail logging and supporting
>>> recipes. In reading 'man ls' it seems (to me) this might result from losing the
>>> execute bit on the directory. Is this correct? Been BSDing since 1995 and have
>>> not seen this set of permissions. Thanks for any insights.
>>
>> After a short read of "man ls":
> [ ... ]
>> Result: User can execute SUID, group cannot execute, others cannot search
>> or execute; sticky bit is set.
>
> Except that this is a directory, not a file....  :-)
>
> A bit of experimentation suggests that "chmod 7500 .procmail" are the permissions involved, which are silly.  No group permissions enabled means setgid is meaningless, and I don't see any value for using the sticky bit here, either.  Try using 0500, 0700, or maybe 4500/4700 instead.

thanks all - the context of this: the users involved do not know what the chmod 
command is much less its syntax and I did not do this. What I was going for was 
could this be a procmail bug or perhaps something more alarming (to me as a 
sysadmin).

_____
Douglas Denault
http://www.safeport.com
doug at safeport.com
Voice: 301-217-9220
   Fax: 301-217-9277