find with execdir seems to ignore umask settings
 

I need to perform a cron-ed find and cp on log files in the form log<day> to log<date> (e.g. log31 to log2007-03-31) and came up with the following command:

find . -name log`/bin/date -d yesterday +%d` -execdir cp log`/bin/date -d yesterday +%d` log`/bin/date -d yesterday +%F` \;

the problem is that the newly created file needs to be accessible by everyone (umask 0) when i put a umask 0 before the find command the files created still end up with -rw-------. how do I succesfully issue the cp command with the proper umask?

Is the directory you execdir from suid'd or sgid'd?

First of all try to do one manually, if that yields a different result, then something else is up.

It is possible that a shell is being invoked somewhere along the line - and the umask is being reset to your default.

There are a couple of ways around that - you could export ENV=~/.bashrc1; export POSIXLY_CORRECT="" prior to the find.

Then put umask 000 in ~/.bashrc1.

Then unset -v POSIXLY_CORRECT or replace ENV if you are already using POSIX.

Or you could switch in your default bashrc or bash_profile.

I am not so sure that -execdir is actually more secure then using -exec (and specifying a shell script). The docs do hint at it being more secure in avoiding race conditions, but the having to avoid ./ or the actual directory being changed to existing in $PATH does seem to make it less secure.

Unfortunately cp does not have a -m option like mkdir, thoguh you could also chmod the file afterwards.

The simplest way is to move the command into a script (I think you can chain commands on the -execdir or -exec but it is awkward).

Thanks Zention, for your elaborate answer. I will sure use the hints you've put there. For my original problem I've found a solution (after rtfm :-)).

Add the "-p" (preserve) option to the cp command. By doing that all ownerships and flags from the original file are preserved.