CentOS - Jun 2014 - umask setting in /etc/profile not working

Hey all,

 We have the following set in /etc/profile :

umask 0002

so that it will affect all users. That should create all files as 664 and
all directories as 775 if I'm not mistaken.

Well I logged into the machine after this was set and just created a file
as one of the users who complained about permissions settings on files. And
this is what I saw:

[user1 at qa_host ~]$ ls -l test_qa
-rw-r--r-- 1 user1 domain^users 0 Jun 11 10:08 test_qa

I even tried logging out and logging in again just to be sure. I still got
the same result.

So my question is why would the file not have the permissions specified by
the umask command in /etc/profile ? I really need this to work for the
users.

Any helps or clues would be great!

Thanks
Tim

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On 06/11/2014 10:14 AM, Tim Dunphy wrote:
> Hey all,
>
>  We have the following set in /etc/profile :
>
> umask 0002
>
> so that it will affect all users. That should create all files as 664 and
> all directories as 775 if I'm not mistaken.
>
> Well I logged into the machine after this was set and just created a file
> as one of the users who complained about permissions settings on files. And
> this is what I saw:
>
> [user1 at qa_host ~]$ ls -l test_qa
> -rw-r--r-- 1 user1 domain^users 0 Jun 11 10:08 test_qa
>
> I even tried logging out and logging in again just to be sure. I still got
> the same result.
>
> So my question is why would the file not have the permissions specified by
> the umask command in /etc/profile ? I really need this to work for the
> users.
>
> Any helps or clues would be great!
>
> Thanks
> Tim
depending on your shell; are you sure you're referencing
/etc/profile at all?  e.g. are you using bash or bourne? 
the prompt looks pretty bash like, but assumptions and all.
are you sure there's not another umask entry either
in the user's homedir .file or in something like /etc/bashrc...

I have a fairly recent install of centos 6.5 and get:
[root at critter etc]# grep -i "umask" *
bashrc:    # By default, we want umask to get set. This sets it for
non-login shell.
bashrc:       umask 002
bashrc:       umask 022
bashrc:    umask 077
csh.cshrc:    umask 002
csh.cshrc:    umask 022
login.defs:UMASK           077
php.ini:; does not overwrite the process's umask.
profile:# By default, we want umask to get set. This sets it for login shell
profile:    umask 002
profile:    umask 022

and the php.ini warning is useful to keep in mind; you
can't add back perms with umask, it can only take
away.   so if you start off with reference to /etc/profile
that does umask 022, which then calls /etc/system-settings.profile
that calls umask 077, then get to the users .bashrc
file and try to do umask 002, you'll still be removing all
perms for group and other, the last call won't change anything.

Am 11.06.2014 um 16:14 schrieb Tim Dunphy <bluethundr at
gmail.com>:
> We have the following set in /etc/profile :
> 
> umask 0002
> 
> so that it will affect all users. That should create all files as 664 and
> all directories as 775 if I'm not mistaken.
> 
> Well I logged into the machine after this was set and just created a file
> as one of the users who complained about permissions settings on files. And
> this is what I saw:
> 
> [user1 at qa_host ~]$ ls -l test_qa
> -rw-r--r-- 1 user1 domain^users 0 Jun 11 10:08 test_qa
> 
> I even tried logging out and logging in again just to be sure. I still got
> the same result.
> 
> So my question is why would the file not have the permissions specified by
> the umask command in /etc/profile ? I really need this to work for the
> users.
> 
> Any helps or clues would be great!



Tim, briefly, don't do that. This (mentioned umask in profile) 
should be classified as bad practice. What is your primarily 
goal? What is the users scenario?  

Take a look into ACL (rpm package acl):

$ man setfacl
$ man getfacl 

There exist a "default" setting to inherit such settings (e.g. write
operations for groups).

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