[PLUG] What's the Dot in the Access Modes Column Mean?

[Fred James]

Bill Thoen wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I've got a Red Hat Fedora core 11 system that has a relatively new 
> feature that I don't recognize and my Google-fu doesn't seem to be 
> strong enough this morning to find the answer to this question.
>
> When I run ls -al I get  a listing like the following. But notice the 
> dot on the right of the access modes for nearly all the files. It's 
> there on all except MapBook.zip. Can someone tell me what this dot 
> indicates and why it doesn't appear with MapBook.zip?
>
> drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root    4096 2010-04-06 21:05 .
> drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root    4096 2009-10-18 12:58 ..
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp     2808 2005-03-08 13:09 14er.txt
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp     7282 2003-11-10 11:47 BrowseFolder.mb
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp     2811 2003-01-31 12:37 Coord_Conversion_HOWTO.txt
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp     6644 2002-06-12 11:48 directorydemo.zip
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp    16341 2004-12-31 15:33 DistanceToolEx.zip
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp     2744 2002-06-12 11:48 euclid.zip
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp   135347 2005-03-15 15:26 hershey.zip
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp     7719 2002-06-12 11:48 hexcell.zip
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp    11298 2003-08-04 15:25 HexGrid_Sample.zip
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp    13813 2005-01-03 11:24 ImportExcel.zip
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp    14443 2004-08-22 12:07 InetLib.zip
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp  1633177 2003-03-26 10:17 Iraq_av.zip
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp  1526664 2003-03-24 15:22 Iraq.zip
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp     6175 2004-10-08 14:05 LayoutText.zip
> -rw-r--r--  1 ftp  ftp   398740 2010-04-06 20:33 MapBook.zip
> drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root    4096 2005-08-22 13:47 MapData
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp   230313 2006-03-30 09:36 MI2SVG.zip
>
> Thanks!
>   
Bill Thoen
Apparently that little dot has disrupted/ruffled more than one 
program/person ... but here is an answer ...
    
<http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=226629&highlight=selinux>
... hope that helps
Regards
Fred James