[texhax] Aha Moment; umask

[Herbert Schulz]

On Jul 12, 2013, at 12:26 PM, Thomas Schneider <schneidt at mail.nih.gov> wrote:

> Dick:
> 
>> I don't think it is possible to change umask from a flag in a call
>> to "sudo ./install-tl".
> 
> I don't have access to install-tl right now but it's just a script,
> right?  So the first thing it can do is set the umask.  The fact that
> it's called by sudo isn't relevant.
> 
>> Thus your suggestion that theTeX Live install script set umask
>> involves the entire TeX world on all Unix platforms and is way
>> higher than my pay grade.
> 
> drwxr-xr-x appears on directories in /usr/local in both Mac OS and
> Linux.  It would be following the normal structure.
> 
> The ONLY reason this happened is that I personally like to keep my
> files restricted AND sudo inherited my preference, applying my
> preferences inappropriatedly to the texlive files in /usr/local.  But
> my preference to restrict access to my files is NOT appropriate for
> files in /usr/local, especially files that are publically available on
> the internet!
> 
> Tom
> 

Howdy,

Was there a place mentioned in that article that Dick Koch pointed to where you can place a simple file that would produce what you wish; i.e., umask is 077 for your personal files/folders but the sysetm default isn't changed. It appears that using `umask 077` inside a shell changes the system default and, I suspect, the personal default picks its value from the system default.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)