[PLUG] umask

[Evan Heidtmann]

On Fri, 2004-04-16 at 19:40, Brian Quade wrote:
> I had a problem where my j2re would only run applications if I am logged 
> in as root.  I tried to find out how to fix it by searching the 
> Internet, but I discovered that a lot of people have this problem and 
> can not fix it.  I reported it to Sun as a bug and they told me it is a 
> usage error, probably my umask.  I can't find much info on umask other 
> than that it is a bash command.  Is it the same as file permissions (set 
> with chmod) or is it something else?  My umask for root is 0002 and my 
> umask for my other user is 0022.  What does this stuff mean?  And how do 
> I change it?

This is from my umask manpage. (for the C function)

The  umask  is  used  by  open(2)  to set initial file permissions on a
newly-created file.  Specifically, permissions in the umask are  turned
off  from  the  mode  argument  to open(2) (so, for example, the common
umask default value of 022 results in new files being created with per-
missions  0666  &  ~022  = 0644 = rw-r--r-- in the usual case where the
mode is specified as 0666).

I'm not telling you to RTFM: I don't think I fully understand that
paragraph myself. But it might make sense to you!

Evan