setperms on linux

[Bill Campbell]

On Wed, Apr 12, 2006, Brian K. White wrote:
>Anyone using suse 10 by any chance?
>
...
>Both the stock setperms and my improved copy have pairs of chmod & chown 
>commands in the order of chmod, then chown.
>
>Some genius has changed something somewhere such that chown now wipes off 
>the suid bit!

This has been around for quite a while (I think even old SCO
OpenServer systems do it).  The idea is to prevent security
problems if somebody has a directory with the wrong permissions
or some such that allows an unpriviledged user to create a setuid
program, then ``chown root'' or some such.  The chmod must be
done after any chown/chgrp commands.

Bill
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