Excerpts from internet.info-afs: 6-Aug-96 file permissions... by Juan L.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> We are experiencing problems when testing file permissions on different
> systems, AIX 3.2.5 and AIX 4.1.4 for instance.
>
> It seems that after all in AFS3.4a the group and other modebits are
> checked when testing the file permissions, but this does not happens in
> AFS 3.3a.
It might not be a change in AFS that's causing you trouble.
If the AIX 3.2.5 shell or command that's running the "[ -x" test calls
"access()" to test permissions, it will look at the owner mode bits no
matter what the UID is. The access call is sent down to AFS which will
do the ACL and owner mode bit checks.
It's possible that on the AIX 4.1.4 system, the permissions test is done
manually by looking at the mode bits, owner UID, and current UID.
(Usually, newer code tends to replace the manual checks with access
calls, so this situation seems the reverse of normal.)
On the AFS 3.4 system, you can use "fstrace" to get an idea of what
calls are being made during the permissions check. If you see
"get_attr", the shell is using "stat()" and may be manually calculating
permissions. If the shell is calling "access()", you'll see references
to "access" in the fstrace log.
Joe Jackson,
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.
