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Changing default umask

Hi I'm trying to set the default umask in several different ways on ubuntu 11.04

"There are no umask entries in /etc/init.d/rcS"

Can somebody please tell me what to put in /etc/init.d/rcS to set the umask to 077?

"There is no default umask settings for user login shells
in /etc/login.defs"

Can somebody please tell me what to put in /etc/login.defs to set the default umask to 077?

And can somebody please tell me how to set the default umask to 077 in
/etc/bashrc and /etc/profile

I want to set it in both to be safe, but I don't know what to put in the files to set the default to 077.

Any help with this would be appreciated!

Do you have a file /etc/login.defs in Ubuntu? If so, you'll find it in there. It will (or should) look like

Code:

# Default initial "umask" value.

# UMASK is also used by useradd and newusers to set the mode of new home

# directories.

# 022 is the default value, but 027, or even 077, could be considered

# better for privacy. There is no One True Answer here: each sysadmin

# must make up her mind.

UMASK          022

If it's not there, try entering the above (and, of course, changing 022 to 077.

While I'm thinking about it, you could simply set it in /etc/profile with

Code:

export UMASK=077

Although that's a little overkill (you do it in /etc/profile to be sure you set the value in all shells -- bear in mind, however, that an individual user can override that setting in their own ~/.profile).

If that doesn't work, try (as root or sudo) to find the actual setting

Code:

cd /etc

find . -type f -print | grep -i umask

Hope this helps some.