You can check the sticky bit permission of the directory using ls -ld directory-name command. On Linux, you can set the sticky bit on the directory using the chmod command which can be verified using ls -l command. The sticky bit is a security feature that makes the file system treat the directories differently.īasically, it makes your publicly writable directories secure by preventing other users from modifying or deleting any files that are not owned by the user who is performing the operation. It's primarily used when set on directories. Setting the sticky bit on a file typically has no effect. The sticky bit is an authorization bit that you can set on a directory to ensure that only the item owner, directory owner, or root user can rename or delete files within that directory, regardless of the permissions of the files themselves. In this tutorial, we will learn about the sticky bit and how to set it. It is simply a convinient way for the OS to express the (user) group associated with something (a process, a file, etc. For directories, files created therein will be associated with the same group as the directory, rather than default group of the user.

Indeed, this is where the 'sticky bit' comes into play in Linux and other Unix-like systems. The GID is, as you have found, the ID number of a group. The problem with that is that anyone can intentionally or accidentally modify/delete files created by other users within that directory.

Certain directories in Linux have write access to everyone, such as the /tmp directory (which is world-writable).

Set gid linux terminal