I have a Solaris 8 machine where, if you load a file into dtpad and save the
file, dtpad will change the file permissions (based on the current umask).
For example rwxr-xr-x would become rw-r--r--. Does anyone know why?

Here's some more info:
- This happens only with dtpad; vi works fine
- 'dtpad -standAlone' does not work either. 'ttsession -c' does not fix
the problem either.
- It happens on only one machine; the other Solaris 8 machines work fine.
The OS patches may be different.
- A quick google shows that I'm not only one with this problem but nobody
has posted a solution.

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"gusmeister" <gusmeister_NOSPAM_@sympatico.ca> writes:

>I have a Solaris 8 machine where, if you load a file into dtpad and save the
>file, dtpad will change the file permissions (based on the current umask).
>For example rwxr-xr-x would become rw-r--r--. Does anyone know why?

When you save, it creates a new file, then renames that to the old
name. This provides the ultimate in safety. In addition to possibly
changing permissions, the inode number will change, and hard links
will be broken.

>Here's some more info:
> - This happens only with dtpad; vi works fine

The difference is that vi saves into the same file, rather than into
a new file. While slightly riskier, this preserves inode,
permissions, and hard links.

> - 'dtpad -standAlone' does not work either. 'ttsession -c' does not fix
>the problem either.

I'm not sure why you would expect those to have any effect on your
"problem".

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Neil W Rickert <rickert+nn@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
> When you save, it creates a new file, then renames that to the old
> name. This provides the ultimate in safety. In addition to possibly
> changing permissions, the inode number will change, and hard links
> will be broken.

Thanks for your response. I've been using dtpad since 1996 and I have never
observed this behaviour. This problem occurs on only one machine.
Besides, a good editor should not change the original permissions of a file.
At the moment, dtpad is converting my Perl scripts to non-executables.

gusmeister <gusmeister_NOSPAM_@sympatico.ca> wrote:
> I have a Solaris 8 machine where, if you load a file into dtpad and save the
> file, dtpad will change the file permissions (based on the current umask).
> For example rwxr-xr-x would become rw-r--r--. Does anyone know why?
>
> - It happens on only one machine; the other Solaris 8 machines work fine.
> The OS patches may be different.

Look especially for patch 108714 - according to the README it's
supposed to fix this problem.

After you install the patch, make sure that all dtpad processes
(esp. dtpad -server) are stopped before re-trying whether the
problem is fixed.

mp.
--
Systems Administrator | Institute for Software Science | Univ. of Vienna

Martin Paul <map@par.univie.ac.at> wrote:
> Look especially for patch 108714 - according to the README it's
> supposed to fix this problem.

Thanks for your help. The patch you mentioned fixed the problem.