STICKY(7)

🎀 STICKY(7) 🎀

okay so bestie, welcome to the sticky(7) page from the Miscellaneous Information Manual. it's literally all about the sticky bit and append-only directories, and it's giving permissions lore. no cap. 💅

✨ NAME ✨

sticky — sticky text and append-only directories

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

There's a special file mode called the sticky bit (mode S_ISTXT) that's used to indicate special treatment for directories. For regular files? It's ignored. literally ignored, bestie. 🙈 For the whole explanation of file modes, see chmod(2) or the file <sys/stat.h>.

🔥 STICKY DIRECTORIES 🔥

When a directory has its sticky bit set, it becomes an append-only directory — or, more accurately, a directory in which the deletion of files is restricted. The way that works: a file in a sticky directory may only be removed or renamed by a user if both things are true:

• the user has write permission for the directory, and
• the user is the owner of the file, the owner of the directory, or the super-user.

This feature is usefully applied to directories such as /tmp, which must be publicly writable but should deny users the license to arbitrarily delete or rename each others' files. 🫶

Any user may create a sticky directory. For details about modifying file modes, see chmod(1). ✨

🦋 HISTORY 🦋

A sticky command appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX/32V. history icon behavior, honestly. 👑

💀 BUGS 💀

Neither open(2) nor mkdir(2) will create a file with the sticky bit set. not me finding that out the hard way 😭

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mwah 💋 this little page is from Debian, dated June 5, 1993. bye bestie, go set some modes responsibly 🫶