Messages in this thread |  | | | From | (Peter Corlett) | | Subject | Re: Why is chmod(2)? | | Date | 24 Sep 1999 21:05:36 GMT |
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Alex Nicolaou <anicolao@cgl.uwaterloo.ca> wrote: [...] > Hmm, I learned something new today. Why can a file with mode 000 be opened > by root? This facility seems pointless since root can always chmod the > file?
Because the chmod is intrusive, and what should be a simple read operation has now turned into a write-read-write operation.
For example, you're backing up a filesystem with 000 files on it. Does tar *really* have to play with the inode (and thus change the ctime) just to read a file to back it up? What if it's on a read-only filesystem?
Having the sort of semantics that require this sort of fiddling just gets in the way, and I'm not convinced it gains anything.
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