Re: Fwd: Re: [Gnu-arch-users] unable to acquire revision lock

[Robert Anderson]

On Wed, 2003-11-19 at 18:51, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 19, 2003 at 03:52:20PM -0500, Robert Anderson wrote:
> > >Setting the umask should help though, right?
> > 
> > If you're free to do so by default, then sure.  I'm not.  I think
> > this is not uncommon in any workplace for which security is a
> > priority.
> 
> You have an implicit self-contradiction here.

I don't believe so.

> On the one hand, you have security policy which mandates a umask which
> prohibits other group members from writing to files and directories
> you create, presumably in order to stop them from writing to such
> files and directories.

No, I don't. And I didn't say I did.

> On the other hand, you want to allow other group members to write to
> files and directories you create.

Yes, I do.

> This conflict is entirely of your own making.

> Nobody else can help you here. Either your security policy or your desire is 
> going to have to
> give.

No.  The policy is a default.  The only absolutes are wrt world
read/write permissions (which is irrelevant for the current
discussion.)  You can wrangle over the precise meaning of "default," but
that would be boring and unnecessary.  My umask that I set in login
files has to mask group read/write.  It is not against the policy to
chmod g+rwx, nor is it against the policy to change it for some
particular operation and then change it back.  There is no
contradiction.

> We have a large pile of proposed solutions when you decide which one.

I really like the uri extension to allow for umask settings.  That seems
ideal to me: it solves my problem in particular perfectly.

Bob