Re: What's in a group?

[Jonathan S. Shapiro]

On Mon, 2006-03-20 at 00:43 +0100, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> At Sun, 19 Mar 2006 17:58:16 -0500,
> Thomas Schwinge <address@hidden> wrote:
> > 
> > On Sun, Mar 19, 2006 at 11:17:48PM +0100, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> > > But what corresponds to the Unix group concept?  I have identified two
> > > semantic uses for a "group":
> > > 
> > > 1) Sharing information and authorization.  Ie, allow communication
> > >    among users of the same group.
> > > 
> > > 2) Provide durable storage that is not associated with any particular
> > >    member of the group.
> > 
> > 3) Hindrance of the above.
> > 
> > #v+
> > $ groups
> > users foo
> > $ ls -l /tmp/not-for-fooers
> > -rw----rw- 1 thomas foo 0 Mar 19 23:45 /tmp/not-for-fooers
> > $ cat /tmp/not-for-fooers
> > cat: /tmp/not-for-fooers: Permission denied
> > #v-
> 
> I'm disgusted!

Oh, it gets better! For this scenario the access() system call will give
the wrong answer on many systems!

But yes, this outcome is entirely buggered, and I don't think that
anybody would argue in its favor.

shap