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I want the umask to be more permissive for users when they switch to a non-default group. Just to demonstrate what I mean:

$ id
uid=500(beamin) gid=500(beamin) groups=10(wheel)

$ umask

$ sg wheel

$ umask # I want this to now be 0002 instead

I was thinking of adding a script to /etc/profile.d/ that would look like this:

if [ "`id -u`" -ge 500 ] && [ "`id -g`" -ne "`id -u`" ]; then
   umask 0002

I got 500 because all our user uids are larger or equal to that. Is this the best way to do it? Or does someone have something that makes more sense?

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2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

I think your solution is fine. In a shell script you can use:

(umask 022;exec sg wheel )

Test with:

umask 002
( umask 022; exec sg wheel umask)

For an alternative solution see my similar post: How do I set permissions structure for multiple users editing multiple sites in /var/www on Ubuntu 9.10?

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You could create a script mysg that executes sg arg followed by umask X where X is either 002 or 022 depending on which group was entered. Probably not the most elegant solution...

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