chmod and UNIX permissions

[pll at lanminds.com]

I recently noted some bizarre behavior on Solaris:

	chmod 6755 foo/  == chmod 4755 foo/

This doesn't make *any* sense to me at all!  Granted, it's 
been abut 3 years or more since I've spent any real time on this OS,
but I didn't think my memory was *that* bad.  So I checked the man 
page.  Sure enough:

     Note that the setgid bit cannot be set (or cleared) in abso-
     lute  mode;  it  must  be  set (or cleared) in symbolic mode
     using g+s (or g-s).

This is on Solaris [2.5.]8/SunOS 5.8.  I know that you could set the 
sgid bit in absolute mode on 2.5.1, and I'm pretty sure that it also 
worked on 2.6.x.  Anyone have any idea when and why this changed?

I wonder how many millions of shell scripts and other sysadmin tools 
broke as a result of this :)
-- 

Seeya,
Paul
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