Correct, but not that uncommon, at least not on some older boxes.
In several older BSD-based boxes I have seen you could do unlink's of
directories *IF* you were root (owning the directory wasn't enough), with
exactly that effect. You couldn't do it using rm (it checked first), but
the system call supported it.
I wouldn't be surprised if the original NFS code from Sun just tried to
do unlink when told, and if you didn't map uid 0 (you usually did) and
used one of these OS you could get into real trouble. You could do the
same thing locally, and uid 0 was mapped by default, so I don't think the
*NFS* code was to blame for that.
In short, these OS depended on the application program (rm) to do the
checking for it, *IFF* you were root. Might even have been by design,
after all *root* can do it anyway :-)
-- Torbjörn Lindgren Funcom Oslo A/S, Langkaia 1, N-0150 Oslo, Norway Phone: +47 22420102 E-mail: tl@funcom.com If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.