Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!uupsi!sunic!cs.umu.se!dvldbg
From: dvldbg@cs.umu.se (Daniel Brahneborg)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc
Subject: Re: Sticky bit?
Keywords: sticky, directory
Message-ID: <1991Mar24.223426.10401@cs.umu.se>
Date: 24 Mar 91 22:34:26 GMT
References: <6704@navy28.UUCP> <gilbertd.669645050@p4.cs.man.ac.uk>
Sender: news@cs.umu.se (News Administrator)
Organization: Dep. of Info.Proc, Umea Univ., Sweden
Lines: 11

In <6704@navy28.UUCP> seda@motcid.UUCP (Joseph W. Seda) writes:
>What does the stick bit do? I could look through all the man pages and probably
>still not find all the details.  Can someone help?

The sticky bit is used for changing the user-id of the process that
runs the program, such as 'su', and lots of others.
The id is set to the user of the file, which in this case
almost always is root. You can also have the group id changed.
Check the manual pages for chmod, they should tell you the details.

/Basic