On Tue, 2003-04-22 at 15:37, Michael Schwendt wrote: > It is a _mask_, hence it's name. Think of "umask" as a bitmask of > the permission bits you want to _erase_. Ah! Okay, I understand now. > It is the same as the "umask" that is applied when you use "chmod", > a boolean operation > > file_permissions = (NOT umask) AND chmod_value > > where "chmod_value" is either the value you specify upon changing > the permissions of a file or the value that is stored for the file. > > The FAT filesystems do not have as many permission bits as the > ext2/ext3 filesystems. Upon mounting a VFAT partition, a compatible > permissions value is constructed from the few FAT permissions bits > and all bits specified in your umask value are erased. For the > most files, the constructed default value is 0777 (rwxrwxrwx), > so an umask=0007 masks "world/other" bits and the result becomes > 0770. [ (NOT 0007) AND 0777 = 0770 AND 0777 = 0770 ] Thank you. Excellent explanation! > I haven't tried dmask/fmask yet. The manual says they work with a > 2.5.x kernel. But they look useful. Yep, I noticed that fmask and dmask only work for 2.5.x when I looked at the man page again after reading your first reply. Thanks! Best, Darren -- ===================================================================== D. D. Brierton darren@xxxxxxxxxxx www.dzr-web.com Trying is the first step towards failure (Homer Simpson) =====================================================================