Messages in this thread |  | | | Date | Sun, 17 Aug 1997 13:00:34 +1000 | | From | Richard Gooch <> | | Subject | Re: Ext2fs getting hosed by fsck |
| |
Peter Moulder writes: > "Albert D. Cahalan" <acahalan@cs.uml.edu> writes: > > > AFAIK, Linux only uses the sticky bit on directories: any > > non-directory with that flag is corrupt. > > Some unix shell scripts will set the sticky bit on ordinary files; > that shouldn't be reason to delete those files. > > E.g. as I remember, my copy of emacs had the sticky bit set. Even if > my memory (or filesystem) is faulty in this case, you can appreciate > that some multi-platform programs will have themselves installed with > the sticky bit set.
If I remember rightly, the sticky bit (on regular files) was historically used as a hint to the OS that it should keep a file around in memory after the process had closed it, for as long as practical. Any decent modern OS like Linux will do that automatically for all files, so Linux should not "care" about the state of the sticky bit. Nevertheless applications may still set this bit, so in no way can you assume that a file with the sticky bit set has been corrupted.
Regards,
Richard....
|  |