Re: Mirroring Question

[Dave Sherohman <esper@sherohman.org>]

On Thu, Jan 16, 2003 at 11:20:12AM -0600, Ray wrote:
> we have multiple machines here running debian, and to try to save bandwidth i 
> followed the instructions for setting up rsyncing a debian mirror.  while 
> looking at it i noticed a few odd things, i don't know if they are a problem 
> or should be of any concern.  several of the folders are setgid (if i'm 
> reading it correctly).  is this how it should be and why does it need to be 
> setgid? (or am i reading it wrong and its something else, but whatever, its 
> something other then the read/write/execute flags)
> 
> like these in the /debian/ 
> drwxrwsr-x    4 root     root         4096 Jan 15 13:52 doc

Yep, those are sgid directories, just as you'd thought.  On a
directory, sgid causes newly-created items with the directory to
default to ownership by the directory's group rather than the
creator's group.  e.g., If I were a member of group root, I would be
able to create files in /debian/doc (since it's group writable), but
they would be owned by esper.root (the directory's group) instead of
esper.esper (my default group) like they would be if I created them
in, say, /tmp or another non-sgid directory.  (Note that home
directories are sgid by default in debian, also.)

-- 
The freedoms that we enjoy presently are the most important victories of the
White Hats over the past several millennia, and it is vitally important that
we don't give them up now, only because we are frightened.
  - Eolake Stobblehouse (http://stobblehouse.com/text/battle.html)