(yes i read the man page for chmod) and i did a basic search on the web.

but it never really went into any info on it.

the reason i ask is. when my systems receaves an email @ at certer user it has a specific mailer specified and that mailer writes stuff to /tmp well the orig. perms were rwxrwxrwt but i had changed it to 777 and i keept getting errors when i sent it mail. Can someone please explaine what the sticky bit is for?

The sticky bit is for the folowing reason:

"With the sticky bit set, only the owner of a file or directory (or the super-user) may change that file's or directory's mode. Only the super-user may set the sticky bit on a non-directory file. If you are not super-user, chmod will mask the sticky-bit but will not return an error. In order to turn on a file's set-group-ID bit, your own group ID must correspond to the file's and group execution must be set."


HTT

The sticky bit on /tmp will prevent users from deleting files any others than owned by themselves.