I'm probably one of the guilty parties here, as I had a lengthy exchange with MetaChrome in the comments of this question, before voting to close it. His/her question seemed to have a middle part (2) that highlighted an interaction between ACLs and default UNIX modes that interested me, but I couldn't get a handle on it without seeing a concrete example. I asked repeatedly for such an example, only be told repeatedly that the question was complete as it was and that no example was needed.

That said, I don't think I can do better than to quote Chris S's comment further down in the exchange:

We frequently find that users, who don't know what they're doing, ask "How do I ABC?", but don't actually want to do ABC, they want XYZ, but it's not what they ask for because they don't know. Hence MadHatter's line of questions.

It didn't help that MetaChrome originally made a simple but major error in his/her question (confusing execute and write permissions). Whilst (s)he immediately saw the error when it was pointed out, the error plus the refusal to provide a concrete example lit up my bozo detectors, and at that point I stopped trying to help and started voting to close.

I should add that although MetaChrome has been very obviously frustrated by the community's response, (s)he has been extremely courteous once (s)he understood where the SF community was coming from, and why it behaves as it does.

So to some extent I don't think this question needs an answer, as it looks like all parties are happy and understand each other. But, like voretaq7 above, I think it's important that these things get resolved openly, and that everyone understands each other as much as possible, so I thought a little context might be helpful.

As an aside, MetaChrome, I still think the question I commented on above has interesting and good elements. I'd got as far as establishing that Ubuntu 12.04.2 uses a 3.5.0 kernel (wiki.ubuntu.com doesn't yet admit of a 12.04.3), downloaded the source for the vanilla 3.5.0 kernel and started poring through the file system code. I've got as far as suspecting a variable current->fs->umask which appears to be the base permissions against which umask is, well, masked, but I can't find out where it comes from. I'm no programmer, so it's slow going, but the question's interesting.

I'm probably one of the guilty parties here, as I had a lengthy exchange with MetaChrome in the comments of this question, before voting to close it. His/her question seemed to have a middle part (2) that highlighted an interaction between ACLs and default UNIX modes that interested me, but I couldn't get a handle on it without seeing a concrete example. I asked repeatedly for such an example, only be told repeatedly that the question was complete as it was and that no example was needed.

That said, I don't think I can do better than to quote Chris S's comment further down in the exchange:

We frequently find that users, who don't know what they're doing, ask "How do I ABC?", but don't actually want to do ABC, they want XYZ, but it's not what they ask for because they don't know. Hence MadHatter's line of questions.

It didn't help that MetaChrome originally made a simple but major error in his/her question (confusing execute and write permissions). Whilst (s)he immediately saw the error when it was pointed out, the error plus the refusal to provide a concrete example lit up my bozo detectors, and at that point I stopped trying to help and started voting to close.

I should add that although MetaChrome has been very obviously frustrated by the community's response, (s)he has been extremely courteous once (s)he understood where the SF community was coming from, and why it behaves as it does.

So to some extent I don't think this question needs an answer, as it looks like all parties are happy and understand each other. But, like voretaq7 above, I think it's important that these things get resolved openly, and that everyone understands each other as much as possible, so I thought a little context might be helpful.

As an aside, MetaChrome, I still think the question I commented on above has interesting and good elements. I'd got as far as establishing that Ubuntu 12.04.2 uses a 3.5.0 kernel (wiki.ubuntu.com doesn't yet admit of a 12.04.3), downloaded the source for the vanilla 3.5.0 kernel and started poring through the file system code. I've got as far as suspecting a variable current->fs->umask which appears to be the base permissions against which umask is, well, masked, but I can't find out where it comes from. I'm no programmer, so it's slow going, but the question's interesting.