chmod dilemma

[lightman47]

I'm using Thunderbird for email with the addressbooksynchronizer addon. The book share is to a network drive and works almost well.

I've revisited the chmod references and again found out how to "sticky" the Group on folder and it's files and it works great. What is vexing me though is that whichever user the WRITES the addressbook sync file changes the permissions to only User RW. The group permissions are completely removed every time the file gets written. Needless to say that when others go to update the file the save "bombs". It gets uglier after that, but no need to go into it.

How can I get chmod to 'sticky' all the permissions, but especially group permissions - or perhaps I can't.

Thank you.

[DBelton]

Have you thought about changing the umask when you mount the network share from the default of 022 to 002?

002 should allow owner and group members to have writable permissions and others to have read-only permissions

[lightman47]

It looks like I am going to study umask in the very near future. Thanks. However, this single, shared folder isn't a separate mount - it's actually several directories down the tree on a shared drive - to which the sync addon has the specified path. Knowing nothing yet about umask, my suspicion is that might matter. <??>

That said, for the time being I just scheduled a crontab every minute to chmod 770 the directory and it's contents. I hate wasting all those cycles although the machine isn't all that busy.

[BinaryBandit]

G'day lightman47,
umask should do what you require, if the people in your group already have read access to your file then you only need to create the file with different umask settings, I suggest you read this little tutorial to determine which settings you need to use.
umask settings can be altered temporarily on a per log in basis or set permanently when each file or directory is created.
I hope this helps,
The Bandit.

[lightman47]

Checked out umask and applied it to my directory, but that really isn't what I am looking for. Umask ALLOWS access - I need to FORCE permissions (RW) for a program that is removing them (the group permissions) when it writes/updates the file. Thanks for the help, though.