Re: Gaining ownership of an inode in own directory using vim :w!

(The subject still isn't quite right, but it's closer.)

On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 7:48 AM, Beco <rcb@beco.cc> wrote:

Dear users,

I'm astonished by this (maybe I'm naive and I'm missing something).

Yesterday as root I saved a file skel.bashrc in my /home/beco user, owned by root, group root.

Today I edited it, logged as beco, and vi told me "warning, read only!". I edited anyway, just to test, and saved with :w!

After that I checked the file and it has changed to owner beco, group beco.

How is that possible?

Thanks,
Beco

You know, it occurs to me just now to wonder whether this misconception about the difference between privileges on an object and privileges on the holding container is part of the motivation behind all the churn on ACLs and their ilk. (And, by extension, the unreasoning trust in the DMCA, as opposed to trusting the US Constitution as it should have been.)

--
Joel Rees