Re: Bug#352394: tex-common: permission scheme for /var/cache/fonts

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at> wrote:

> _Description: Manage the permissions of the TeX font cache with debconf.
>  A TeX system may have to generate new font data (pixel data, metric,
>  sources) on the fly. These files can be saved into the TeX font cache
>  in /var/cache/fonts and later reused.
>  .
>  If you accept, you can specify a group name and *all* directories under
>  /var/cache/fonts will get ownership root:<groupname> and permission
>  bits 2755 (i.e. writeable for the group <groupname> and sticky bit set).

According to info coreutils, the 2 means the setgid bit:

,----
|      1000      Save text image on swap device
|      2000      Set group ID on execution
|      4000      Set user ID on execution
`----

For directories, the meaning is:

,----
|    In addition to the three sets of three permissions listed above, a
| file's permissions have three special components, which affect only
| executable files (programs) and, on some systems, directories:
| 
|   [...]
|   2. set the process's effective group ID to that of the file upon
|      execution (called the "setgid bit").  For directories on some
|      systems, put files created in the directory into the same group as
|      the directory, no matter what group the user who creates them is
|      in.
| 
|   3. save the program's text image on the swap device so it will load
|      more quickly when run (called the "sticky bit").  For directories
|      on some systems, prevent users from removing or renaming a file in
|      a directory unless they own the file or the directory; this is
|      called the "restricted deletion flag" for the directory.
`----

Won't both make sense in our case?

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)