Mailing-List:	contact cygwin-developers-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
List-Subscribe:	<mailto:cygwin-developers-subscribe AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Archive:	<http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin-developers/>
List-Post:	<mailto:cygwin-developers AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Help:	<mailto:cygwin-developers-help AT cygwin DOT com>, <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/#faqs>
Sender:	cygwin-developers-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Delivered-To:	mailing list cygwin-developers AT cygwin DOT com
Message-Id:	<3.0.5.32.20030108231516.00838190@mail.attbi.com>
X-Sender:	phumblet AT mail DOT attbi DOT com
Date:	Wed, 08 Jan 2003 23:15:16 -0500
To:	cygwin-developers AT cygwin DOT com
From:	"Pierre A. Humblet" <Pierre DOT Humblet AT ieee DOT org>
Subject:	stat with no READ_CONTROL
Mime-Version:	1.0

Corinna,

when stat is called on a file with a non-readable security descriptor
(e.g. because of no READ_CONTROL permission), read_sd fails but stat
still succeeds. 
However the uid and gid are set to garbage (uninitialized automatic
variables) and the modes are from nontsec, rw-r--r--.
Other info, such as the times and size, can be correct.

The question is what to do about it. According to posix 
<http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908799/xsh/fstat.html>
stat can (additional or alternative file access control mechanisms)
and must (cannot provide correct info) fail.

A consequence of this hard nosed approach is that ls -l may not show 
all files. To avoid that, stat could return uid = gid = -1 and modes = 0.

Which is best in this case: conformance to posix or user friendliness?

Pierre

- Raw text -