28.4. ACL Support in Applications

As described in the preceding sections, ACLs can be used to implement very complex permission scenarios that meet the requirements of modern applications. The traditional permission concept and ACLs can be combined in a smart manner. However, some important applications still lack ACL support. Except for the star archiver, there are currently no backup applications that guarantee the full preservation of ACLs.

The basic file commands (cp, mv, ls, and so on) do support ACLs, but many editors and file managers (such as Konqueror) do not. When copying files with Konqueror, for instance, the ACLs of these files are lost. When modifying files with an editor, the ACLs of files are sometimes preserved, sometimes not, depending on the backup mode of the editor used. If the editor writes the changes to the original file, the access ACL will be preserved. If the editor saves the updated contents to a new file that is subsequently renamed to the old file name, the ACLs may be lost, unless the editor supports ACLs.

[Tip]Additional Information

Detailed information about ACLs is available at http://sdb.suse.de/en/sdb/html/81_acl.html and http://acl.bestbits.at/. Also see the man pages for getfacl, acl(5), and setfacl(1).


SUSE LINUX 9.2