UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Working out of AIX 4.3's .
have machine (a) and machine (b)
umask on both machines is 'umask 022'.
as user root (these are trivial machines hence dummies like me have root access) when i Ftp files from a to b , why is it that I loose the original file permissions. After the ftp I have to chmod it.

i.e, file <dummy> on machine (a) has value of -rw-r- -r- - , when ftp'ed to (b), <dummy> ends up as -rw-r- - - - -

Is this due to ftp or is there something else....

Thnx..

The FTP client doesn't read your .profile (or equivalent) when you connect, so it has no way to know what your umask is. You should be able to set the umask on the client. If you are using a command-line client it is done via the 'umask' command (surprise!). There may also be a global config file in /etc which controls this setting. Hope that helps.