Re^2: Execute But Not Read

AFAIK you can't execute a non-readable program on UNIX. Try it:

$ ls -la a.out
---x--x--x  1 joost joost 30 Jan 21 11:26 a.out
$ ./a.out
bash: ./a.out: Permission denied
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"What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"

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Re^3: Execute But Not Read by Anonymous Monk on Jan 21, 2005 at 15:30 UTC
That works fine on OpenBSD. Even a perl script, like this: ---x--x--x 1 root wheel 33 Jan 21 10:13 hello.pl can be executed by non-root user. But it has to be called directly, like: ./hello.pl Trying to run it with "perl hello.pl" will give permission denied... Advanced users will still be able to access the source with ktrace or ptrace though. But if you own the server, you could always hack your kernel to not allow tracing root-owned programs. And the users won't be able to copy your program to run elsewhere since the perms don't allow it...	[reply]
Re^4: Execute But Not Read by Joost (Canon) on Jan 22, 2005 at 01:56 UTC
Good catch. I didn't know that this would work on OpenBSD. Though it seems slightly more logical for execute only permissions to work, I assumed the situation was the same for all UNIX/POSIX systems, but apparently not. Thanks for enlightening me. "What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"	[reply]