Re: Ext2fs getting hosed by fsck
Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.CSIRO.AU)
Sun, 17 Aug 1997 13:00:34 +1000
Peter Moulder writes:
> "Albert D. Cahalan" <acahalan@cs.uml.edu> writes:
>
> > AFAIK, Linux only uses the sticky bit on directories: any
> > non-directory with that flag is corrupt.
>
> Some unix shell scripts will set the sticky bit on ordinary files;
> that shouldn't be reason to delete those files.
>
> E.g. as I remember, my copy of emacs had the sticky bit set. Even if
> my memory (or filesystem) is faulty in this case, you can appreciate
> that some multi-platform programs will have themselves installed with
> the sticky bit set.
If I remember rightly, the sticky bit (on regular files) was
historically used as a hint to the OS that it should keep a file
around in memory after the process had closed it, for as long as
practical. Any decent modern OS like Linux will do that automatically
for all files, so Linux should not "care" about the state of the
sticky bit. Nevertheless applications may still set this bit, so in no
way can you assume that a file with the sticky bit set has been
corrupted.
Regards,
Richard....