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Annotation of 43BSDTahoe/man/man8/sticky.8, revision 1.1.1.1

1.1       root        1: .\" Copyright (c) 1980 Regents of the University of California.
                      2: .\" All rights reserved.  The Berkeley software License Agreement
                      3: .\" specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution.
                      4: .\"
                      5: .\"    @(#)sticky.8    6.3 (Berkeley) 5/26/86
                      6: .\"
                      7: .TH STICKY 8 "May 26, 1986"
                      8: .UC 4
                      9: .SH NAME
                     10: sticky \- persistent text and append-only directories
                     11: .SH DESCRIPTION
                     12: The
                     13: .I "sticky bit"
                     14: (file mode bit 01000, see
                     15: .IR chmod (2))
                     16: is used to indicate special treatment
                     17: for certain executable files and directories.
                     18: .SH "STICKY TEXT EXECUTABLE FILES"
                     19: While the `sticky bit'
                     20: is set on a sharable executable file,
                     21: the text of that file will not be removed from the system swap area.
                     22: Thus the file does not have to be fetched from the file system
                     23: upon each execution.
                     24: Shareable text segments are normally placed
                     25: in a least-frequently-used cache after use,
                     26: and thus the `sticky bit' has little effect on commonly-used text images.
                     27: .PP
                     28: Sharable executable files are made by the
                     29: .B \-n
                     30: and
                     31: .B \-z
                     32: options of
                     33: .IR ld (1).
                     34: .PP
                     35: Only the super-user can set the sticky bit
                     36: on a sharable executable file.
                     37: .SH "STICKY DIRECTORIES"
                     38: A directory whose `sticky bit' is set
                     39: becomes an append-only directory, or, more accurately,
                     40: a directory in which the deletion of files is restricted.
                     41: A file in a sticky directory may only be removed or renamed
                     42: by a user if the user has write permission for the directory and
                     43: the user is the owner of the file, the owner of the directory,
                     44: or the super-user.
                     45: This feature is usefully applied to directories such as /tmp
                     46: which must be publicly writable but
                     47: should deny users the license to arbitrarily
                     48: delete or rename each others' files.
                     49: .PP
                     50: Any user may create a sticky directory.
                     51: See
                     52: .IR chmod (1)
                     53: for details about modifying file modes.
                     54: .SH BUGS
                     55: Since the text areas of sticky text executables are stashed in the swap area,
                     56: abuse of the feature can cause a system to run out of swap.
                     57: .PP
                     58: Neither
                     59: .IR open (2)
                     60: nor
                     61: .IR mkdir (2)
                     62: will create a file with the sticky bit set.

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