Can anyone tell me what is this L bit in groups last bit ??
I got this line in one of my directory..

Some implementations of the ls command use L to denote the set-group-id bit, whereas you usually see a S. The uppercase L means that the execution bit is not set, otherwise you would see a lowercase l. The same applies when ls shows it as S or s.

An example of an executable with the setgid bit set is the command wall. In this case the l should be lowercase, since the execution bit is set. Check it on your system to verify:
At this point I'm curious... which system are you running on and what implementation of the ls command is this?

Lastly, you can find some information about the L permission bit here.

2 members found this post helpful.

I got this :



Thanks for the info. But if executable bit is not set, then it should remain blank.

Ok, there are differences from system to system on how permissions are set. On which system do you see the L behaviour anyway?
Good point! Indeed the setgid bit has a different meaning if applied to executables, not-executables or directories:

1. on executables: the user who executes the program gains privileges of the group to which the file is assigned.
2. on not-executables: processes are granted to use the mandatory locking on these files. See this document for details: http://kernel.org/doc/Documentation/...ry-locking.txt
3. on directories: this causes new files created inside the directory to inherit its group ID.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks colucix for the nice info.

Actually I got it on an very old Unix System ( IRIX 6.5 ).