drwxr-sr-x

[Kurt Wall]

On Sunday 20 February 2005 22:50, Michael Hipp enlightened us thusly:
> What does the 's' mean and why does it seem to show up randomly and
> only in the group 'x' position?
>
> drwxr-sr-x    2 root     staff         102 2005-02-20 21:40 samba
>        ^
> I just created that directory a few minutes ago with 'sudo mkdir
> /home/samba'.

It means that the setgid bit is set, meaning that files created in that 
directory will automatically be ownder by the group that owns the 
directory. We use this feature all the time at work. It's also how Red 
Hat's user-private group scheme works.

Kurt