chgrp resets the setuid and getgid bits

[Paul Dwerryhouse]

On Tue, Jul 25, 2006 at 07:44:14PM +1000, Ben Stringer wrote:
> I observed this today on an RHEL4 system, and it applies to Fedora also.
> I don't understand why this occurs - is it a security feature?

[snip]

> If anyone can shed light on this for me, I would appreciate it.

It's fairly standard for Unix systems; as far as I can remember,
Solaris, Tru64, and every other Unix-like OS I've come across does this,
too.

I can't think, off the top of my head, of a specific need for it to
happen (since a user can't change the ownership or group of another
user's file); it's probably done just to force an admin to confirm that
they still want the file to be setuid/setgid when they alter it.

Cheers,

Paul

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