umask 027 and the sudo user

schrödinbug

5/31/24, 12:47 PM

This is sort of a follow on question to What permissions would change if I change umask to 027 from 022?

Our IT has changed umask from the default 022 to 077 and then to 027 after enough complaints were received. The main issue I have with either 027 or 077 (it was changed in /etc/login.defs) is that the sudo user also grabs that umask which ends up breaking things in subtle and often infuriating ways. The main issues revolves around installing software / dev tools / libraries that require root privileges.

Normally the libraries will get installed in /usr/local which obviously requires the use of sudo. The main problem is when the sudo user has one of the higher umasks the files that get installed into /usr/local (and hence are owned by root and belongs to root's group) are unusable by me once the installation is complete. Yes I could go change the permission of all the files that get installed so they're readable by normal users, but that seems like a horrible solution (when I install software such as cmake, how am I suppose to track down all the files it installs?).

I guess I'm trying to figure out how those who advocating using a umask of 027 or 077 make it so sudo doesn't inherit that umask or how this problem is normally solved. I can't imagine it's an issue unique to us.

Possible answer here: Issue with umask UBUNTU 14.04.3

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permissions

sudo

umask

steeldriver

5/31/24, 1:17 PM

The sudoers file has its own umask option - but to allow it to set a more permissive value than that inherited via PAM you need to set the umask_override property as well I think. See for example [Set sudo umask apart from the user calling it](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/265497/set-sudo-umask-apart-from-the-user-calling-it)

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