Wouter Verhelst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > You can only do that if you have write permissions to the directory the > file is in; if not: > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/usr$ touch -d 'next year' doc; ls -ld doc . > touch: setting times of `doc': Operation not permitted > drwxr-xr-x 16 root root 472 Apr 28 03:21 . > drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 7568 May 13 02:42 doc
Wrong. The error here comes from the fact that, just as described in the documentation, you don't own the file. If I can't write to the directory, but I own the file, I can still make the change: $ mkdir foo $ cd foo $ touch file $ chmod a-w . file $ touch -d 'next year' file $ ll -d . file dr-xr-xr-x 2 prj default 72 May 13 11:22 . -r--r--r-- 1 prj default 0 May 13 2004 file > This is because those timestamps are saved in the directory inode > instead of in the file inode, so closing down permissions on the file > won't prevent anyone from tampering with timestamps. No, the file's metadata is stored in its own inode. But its permission bits affect access only to its data, not to its metadata. Metadata is always writable by the owner - otherwise you wouldn't be able to restore your own write access after removing it. paul
