>On another related question... the user is also complaining about ownership >of files and directories. Couldn't I just solve that problem with a sticky >bit, i.e. chmod -R u+s * and chmod -R g+s *? possibly; although you can also screw things up pretty well if the user has done something like.. mkdir x; cd x ; ln -sf /etc ./et_cetera_config_files > >And as mentioned I have only one umask set in /etc/profile > >[root at qa_hostapps]# grep umask /etc/profile >umask 0002 > but /etc/profile isn't the only thing that bash calls/uses (at least not by default) what do you get if you do a 'egrep umask /etc/*' ? and in the home dir, what do you get from egrep umask .??* ?