It's definitely not nor has ever been a feature of The One True Unix(tm).

Never saw it on linux, either.

On 6/3/10, Jeffrey Watts jeffrey.w.watts@gmail.com wrote:

I don't recall that ever being used on Linux - at least from ext2 onwards. I also don't recall ever working on any other Unix that did that either. Perhaps it's a minimal or special-case filesystem option for some OSes?

Jeffrey.

On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 1:09 PM, David Nicol davidnicol@gmail.com wrote:

...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Filesystem_permissions#Packed_permission_b...

Clearly, ext3 has moved beyond "packed permission bits" if that ever was a production concept.

[david@hexaflexagon scrabble]$ touch BLOP [david@hexaflexagon scrabble]$ ls -l BLOP -rw-r--r-- 1 david david 0 Jun 3 04:11 BLOP [david@hexaflexagon scrabble]$ chmod o+x BLOP [david@hexaflexagon scrabble]$ ls -l BLOP -rw-r--r-x 1 david david 0 Jun 3 04:11 BLOP [david@hexaflexagon scrabble]$

Under packed permissions, granting for OTHERS would grant for USER and GROUP too.

Here's my question: When did packed permissions stop being used, if they ever were? Does anyone else remember "chmod o+w foo" silently implying "chmod ugo+w foo" and if so how log ago was that?

-- "I'm not giving in an inch to fear" --David Crosby _______________________________________________ KCLUG mailing list KCLUG@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug

On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Billy Crook billycrook@gmail.com wrote:

Maybe David's thinking of a+x.  That would do what he's talking about.  I've never heard of 'packed permissions'.

I'm not thinking of a+x, I'm thinking of a file system so old that saving six bits per file system entry was worth the resulting confusion, like, PDP-10 or early seventies Unices.

a+ is probably the only time I ever encountered having one letter set multiple bits, though.