Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!uflorida!codas!cpsc6a!rtech!llama!wong
From: wong@llama.rtech.UUCP (J. Wong)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: system (and mkdir)
Keywords: c program
Message-ID: <1658@rtech.UUCP>
Date: 30 Jan 88 07:53:46 GMT
References: <127@dcrbg1.UUCP> <9472@ccicpg.UUCP> <2771@cbdkc1.ATT.COM> <224@intelisc.UUCP>
Sender: news@rtech.UUCP
Reply-To: wong@llama.UUCP (J. Wong)
Organization: Relational Technology, Inc. Alameda, CA
Lines: 20

In article <224@intelisc.UUCP> shannon@intelisc.UUCP (Shannon Nelson) writes:
>In article <2771@cbdkc1.ATT.COM> pmd@cbdkc1.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) writes:
>>In article <9472@ccicpg.UUCP> miket@ccicpg.UUCP (Mike Tracy) writes:
>>}
>I may be showing my ignorance, but what ever happened to the mkdir()
>call?  In my manuals (Xenix, sysVr3, Pyramid OSx) neither the call nor
>the command say anything about set-uid to root.

I believe that in System V and other non-BSD systems (especially version 7)
only super-users could create links to directories.  Since the . and .. entries
were really just links to the directory and its parent both "mkdir" and "rmdir"
had to be set-UID to be able to create a `Unix' directory (i.e., the system
call didn't create these links, but "mkdir" did!)
				J. Wong		ucbvax!mtxinu!rtech!wong

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