Hello,
I'm running mandrake 9.1 and KDE. Generally, I like it. But
I notice that when I save a file, the default permissions are:

rw-rw-r--

This means that "others" can read my files by default.
This does not seem to be a sensible default, so I
would like to change the default permissions to:

rw-rw----

But where do I change it?

~/.bashrc points to /etc/bashrc
~/.profile doesn't exist

Putting umask 117 in /etc/bashrc doesn't work.
Putting umask 117 in /etc/profile doesn't work either.

So where is umask being set?

Thanks.

Put your command in ~/.bash_profile . That should do the trick.

If you put your files in your home directory, no one will be able to read them. So think twice before you do the above step.

HTH

Thanks for the reply.

I tried putting umask 117 in ~/.bash_profile, logging out then in again, and creating a file.
The permissions are still rw-rw-r--. So that didn't do it.

I tried putting umask=117 in ~/.bash_profile, logging out then in again, and creating a file.
The permissions are still rw-rw-r--. So that didn't do it either.

"If you put your files in your home directory, no one will be able to read them." - Unfortunately this is not the case on my system (Mandrake 9.1, default install). My home directory (and everybody else's too) has the permissions rwxr-xr-x, so they are basically "open". And I'd like to try to fix this.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks

after making the changes, can u exmie the values of umask (by using the command umask -S) it migh be useful

I think you should see this page http://unix.about.com/library/weekly/aa090400c.htm

It says that
And that you should specify your desired permissions in ~/.profile file

Either I have got completely the wrong end of the stick, or this gets weirder:

Here is my .bash_profile:
======================================
# .bash_profile

# Get the aliases and functions
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
. ~/.bashrc
fi

# User specific environment and startup programs
umask=0177

touch /home/mike/bashtest

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
export PATH
unset USERNAME
======================================

When I logout and back in again, the file bashtest is created, but with
permissions of rw-rwr--

I cannot explain this.

Any ideas?

A bit more experimenting:

The syntax in ~/.bash_profile was wrong. It needs to say "umask 177", ie no "=" sign and no leading zero.

The file bashtest is now created with the permissions: rw-------, which is what I wanted. So
this does work, but only temporarily it seems

If I open a shell, (konsole) "touch foo", then foo has permissions rw-r--r-- , and umask has gone back to the default value of 0022

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I tried it on my system, and it worked. Sorry seems more magic is involved than I can fathom

Nearly cracked it:

This was a very useful thread: http://www.linuxchix.org/pipermail/t...er/006119.html

Setting umask to 177 in ~/.bash_profile creates new files with the right permissions (rw-------), but directories with the wrong ones - so I do not have access to new dirs I create. The magic number for umask seems to be 077. Dirs are now created rwx------, which is good.

Konsole(s) opened from KDE revert to a umask of 022, which is annoying. Konsole doesn't seem to read ~/.bash_profile, which is odd.

All I have to do now is some fancy command-line stuff with "find" and "chmod" and whatnot to reset the permissions properly for all those files and directories that I and the other users have so far created.

Many thanks for your help and encouragement.

The last word ( I hope ) on this tedious subject

To make KDE applications and shells opened from
KDE (eg with konsole), and <CTRL><ALT><F-something> logins save files with the
correct default permissions of rw-------

I had to put umask 077 into
~/.bashrc and
~/.bash_profile
and also put export BASH_ENV=~/.bashrc into /etc/profile

Thanks to tinkster, man bash and google!

Hate to have to crack this baby back open again, but, how would I do this for all users on a system without editing everyone's bashrc and bash_profile files?

MadTurki, I think you will have to edit all those bashrc and bash_profile files. If there are many users, I expect you can create a script to do this for you, but for just a few, it's probably not worth the effort.

For users that you will create in the future though, take a look in /etc/skel.

So, this is working great for users that telnet or ssh into the server. But the same people using samba are still ending up with the default 755 permissions :S How can I make this effect samba as well?

have you considered using the Samba configuration file (/etc/samba/smb.conf) to set the creation value for files?
Here is an example:

comment = ITTwo Admins.
available = yes
path = /private
public = yes
guest only = no
browsable = no
writable = yes
valid users = +mgrs
write list = r.alvez,careyann
admin users = r.alvez,careyann
create mask = 0770
directory mask = 2770

Hope this helps.

Rick

You don't need to edit every user's files unless they are specifically setting the umask already. If there is no umask command in their home files, then /etc/profile is used. You can add umask to that to make it systemwide (provided it's not overridden in a user's home directory).

Also, there's no need to add it to both bash files. You can simply source .bashrc from .bash_profile, and make whatever modifications you want to .bashrc: