The first half of the 6.6 merge window [LWN.net]

The first half of the 6.6 merge window

Posted Aug 31, 2023 23:36 UTC (Thu) by th0ma7 (guest, #24698)
Parent article: The first half of the 6.6 merge window

> The kernel will no longer allow the changing of permissions on symbolic links.

Wouldn't this affect user space?

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Changing permissions on symbolic links

Posted Aug 31, 2023 23:45 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (2 responses)

No, I would not expect this change to affect user space. Most filesystems already do not allow symlink permissions to be changed, and those permissions are meaningless in any case.

Note that we're not talking about changing permissions on the target of a symlink, only the symlink itself.

Changing permissions on symbolic links

Posted Sep 1, 2023 13:39 UTC (Fri) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] (1 responses)

Has it even been possible to express the operation of changing symlink permissions? "chmod symlink" dereferences the link to the thing it points to.

Changing permissions on symbolic links

Posted Sep 1, 2023 13:48 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

fchmodat() can do that; see this article from July.