Re: Permissions of the root dot files

[Steffen Nurpmeso <steffen%sdaoden.eu@localhost>]

Valery Ushakov wrote in
 <Yw3car1++bN2TTQU%pony.stderr.spb.ru@localhost>:
 |On Tue, Aug 30, 2022 at 08:38:02 +0700, Robert Elz wrote:
 |
 |>     Date:        Tue, 30 Aug 2022 02:27:33 +0300
 |>     From:        Valery Ushakov <uwe%stderr.spb.ru@localhost>
 |>     Message-ID:  <Yw1LZafmJKAvhaaj%pony.stderr.spb.ru@localhost>
 |> 
 |>| Is there any particular reason why /root/.profile and /root/.cshrc
 |>| (that have hard links in / too, for the single user mode i guess) are
 |>| not writable?
 |> 
 |> Aside from applications like vi rm mv etc (probably more) which require
 |> a slight bit more effort if the file has no write permission, what
 |> difference does the user 'w' (or 'r' ... 'x' does matter) permission
 |> bit really make on a root owned file?
 |
 |Exactly my point.  So why do we inflict that on people (ourselves
 |included)?  .shrc is writable but .profile is not and (vice versa) for
 |csh - .login is writable and .cshrc is not.
 |
 |Dot files are meant to be edited, so "aside from vi" is, IMO, a
 |mischaracterization of a situation.  And "a slight bit more"
 |accumulates over different test VMs etc.

In the mailer i maintain i once committed

    mk/make-install.sh: install binaries 0755 not 0555..

      Since packagers have been seen which explicitly adjust their
      recipes for that, do it.
      Since root can by default write anything whatsoever on a Unix,
      0555 is misleading at best.

(Old hand Jürgen Daubert, CRUX-Linux.)

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)