Hi,

could it be that HP-UX 11.31 (September Release) considers permissions for
symbolic links, even though the manual page ln(1) claims otherwise?
In Linux the permissions for symbolic links is always "a=rwx", while in HP-UX
the umask masks off bits, like "go=-rwx". It looks as if a user of the
category "other" (o) fails to access the file the link refers to if the
correspondig permission bits on the _link_ are absent.

My view of symbolic links (in an ideal world) would be somehow in-between:
Write permissions on the symbolic link allows a process to modify the value of
the link, while read permissions allow a process to read the value of the
link. Thus accessing a file via a symbolic link would require read permissions
on all intermediate links.

Now that I don't heve HP-UX sources: How did HP-UX 11.31 implement access
checking and traversing of symbolic links? The wrong way?

<bad-humour>
HP technican's answer: As HP-UX uses "umask 0" by default, this issue isn't
really a problem on a "standard installation".
</bad-humour>

Regards,
Ulrich

Ulrich Windl wrote:
> could it be that HP-UX 11.31 (September Release) considers permissions for
> symbolic links, even though the manual page ln(1) claims otherwise?

I don't think so, they should be ignored.

> It looks as if a user of the
> category "other" (o) fails to access the file the link refers to if the
> corresponding permission bits on the _link_ are absent.

I don't see this, at least for "u": (Original 11.31 release)
$ (umask 444; ln -s ~/hi.c . )  # even with 777
$ ll hi.c
l-wx-wx-wx   1 dhandly  18 Jan 10 19:26 hi.c@ -> /home/dhandly/hi.c
$ more hi.c
#include <stdio.h> ...