I'm looking at sgid clearing in case of file modification. Seems like the intent was: - if not a regular file, then don't clear - else if task has CAP_FSETID in init_user_ns, then don't clear - else if group exec is set, then clear - else if gid is in task's group list, then don't clear - else if gid and uid are mapped in current namespace and task has CAP_FSETID in current namespace, then don't clear - else clear However behavior seems to deviate from that if group exec is clear and *suid* bit is not set. The reason is that inode_has_no_xattr() will set S_NOSEC and __file_remove_privs() will bail out before even starting to interpret the rules. This behavior is also codified in xfstests. E.g. generic/683.out: Test 1 - qa_user, non-exec file falloc 6666 -rwSrwSrw- TEST_DIR/683/a 666 -rw-rw-rw- TEST_DIR/683/a vs Test 9 - qa_user, non-exec file falloc, only sgid 2666 -rw-rwSrw- TEST_DIR/683/a 2666 -rw-rwSrw- TEST_DIR/683/a and Test 3 - qa_user, user-exec file falloc 6766 -rwsrwSrw- TEST_DIR/683/a 766 -rwxrw-rw- TEST_DIR/683/a vs _user, user-exec file falloc, only sgid 2766 -rwxrwSrw- TEST_DIR/683/a 2766 -rwxrwSrw- TEST_DIR/683/a Should the S_IXGRP test be purged from is_sxid() to make this consistent? Thanks, Miklos