Linux ACL behaviour: settings the mask changes ‘ls’ output, but not actual permissions

access-control-listchmodlinuxposix

It might be the time of night, but this is puzzling me. Picture the following.

[root@node1 acltest]# getfacl foo/
# file: foo
# owner: root
# group: testuser
user::rwx
group::r-x
other::---

[root@node1 acltest]# ls -la .
total 24
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root     4096 Feb  9 21:53 .
drwxr-xr-x 25 root root     4096 Feb  9 21:54 ..
drwxr-x---  2 root testuser 4096 Feb  9 21:53 foo
[root@node1 acltest]# setfacl -m m::rwx foo
[root@node1 acltest]# getfacl foo/
# file: foo
# owner: root
# group: testuser
user::rwx
group::r-x
mask::rwx
other::---

[root@node1 acltest]# ls -la .
total 24
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root     4096 Feb  9 21:53 .
drwxr-xr-x  25 root root     4096 Feb  9 21:54 ..
drwxrwx---+  2 root testuser 4096 Feb  9 21:53 foo
[root@node1 acltest]# su - testuser
[testuser@node1 ~]$ cd /acltest/foo/
[testuser@node1 foo]$ ls -la .
total 16
drwxrwx---+ 2 root testuser 4096 Feb  9 21:53 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root     4096 Feb  9 21:53 ..
[testuser@node1 foo]$ touch bar
touch: cannot touch `bar': Permission denied

In words: I create a directory foo, with mode 0750, root as owner and testuser as the group. (testuser is the private group of testuser, but that doesn't matter.)

The getfacl command correctly shows no ACL's on this directory and there is not mask yet. The mask will be set accordingly to the group permissions if I would add a named group or user now.

If I explicitly set the mask to rwx now, the group permissions as shown by ls change too. I know it happens the other way around (the mask changes when the group permissions change), but this seems puzzling.

The more puzzling because the getfacl output does not show the group permissions as rwx but – as said – ls does.

Which one is right? Apparently, the output of getfacl is right, because testuser cannot write to foo. As expected, by the way, because I did not grant the testuser group any permissions to do so.

It goes on. I cannot allow the testuser group write permissions on foo by just using chmod. I have to explicitly set an ACL using setfacl -m g:testuser:rwx foo to allow testuser to finally touch foo/bar.

Can someone explain the rationale behind the difference in the outputs of getfacl and ls? I know it can be tricky to have normal permissions go together with ACL's, but this seems plain wrong. (Though I expect to be missing something glaringly obvious ;))

I have already seen Why does chmod(1) on the group affect the ACL mask?

Best Answer

From the man(5) page of acl

    ACL_MASK        The ACL_MASK entry denotes the maximum access
                       rights that can be granted by entries of type
                       ACL_USER, ACL_GROUP_OBJ, or ACL_GROUP.

and later:

  1. else if the effective group ID or any of the supplementary group IDs of the process match the file group or the qualifier of any entry of type ACL_GROUP, then
          if the ACL contains an ACL_MASK entry, then

              if  the ACL_MASK entry and any of the matching ACL_GROUP_OBJ
              or ACL_GROUP  entries  contain  the  requested  permissions,
              access is granted,

              else access is denied.

This means that rwx CAN be granted on the dir, but the chmod bits have to agree with it.

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