dot on end of permissions - something new?

John Reiser jreiser at BitWagon.com
Mon Apr 20 14:03:32 UTC 2009


>> # ls -lad /root
>> drwxr-x---. 35 root root 4096 19. Apr 11:11 /root/
>>
>> ???------^^^
>>
>> What does this dot mean?
> 
> Just to summarize history: Upstream of coreutils marked all files with
> SELinux context with '+' starting with 6.10 release. As SELinux enabled
> is default in Fedora and ls is the easiest way how to recognize files
> with ACL's, it was reported as rhbz #430779 in Jan 2008, so the '+' was
> removed in Fedora for files with SELinux context only - as temporary
> solution. Similar bugzilla was reported in Debian and coreutils upstream
> changed the behaviour to show '.' for files with SELinux context only
> for 7.0 release, as marking them is required by POSIX. 

That summary is incomplete because it does not mention that '+' (plus sign)
in Fedora now means "has ACLs, too".

    ' ' (blank)  no SELinux coverage
    '.' (dot)    ordinary SELinux context only
    '+' (plus)   SELinux ACLs or other things beyond ordinary context

-- 




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