+  
+
My file system sematics program
+presented
+a few days ago is very useful to verify that a file system can
+work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
+looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
+University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
+Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
+Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
+where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
+Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
+script:
+
+
+mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
+  mode_t retval = 0;
+  int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
+  if (-1 != fd) {
+    unlink(name);
+    struct stat statbuf;
+    if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
+      retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
+    }
+    close(fd);
+  }
+  return retval;
+}
+
+/* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
+int test_umask(void) {
+  printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
+
+  mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
+  mode_t newmode;
+  if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
+    printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
+           newmode);
+  }
+  umask(007);
+  if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
+    printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
+           newmode);
+  }
+
+  umask (orig_umask);
+  return 0;
+}
+
+int main(int argc, char **argv) {
+  [...]
+  test_umask();
+  return 0;
+}
+
+
+
Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:
+
+
+Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
+info: testing symlink creation
+info: testing subdirectory creation
+info: testing fcntl locking
+  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
+  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
+  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
+  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
+  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
+  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
+info: testing umask effect on file creation
+
+
+
When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
+result:
+
+
+Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
+info: testing symlink creation
+info: testing subdirectory creation
+info: testing fcntl locking
+  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
+  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
+  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
+  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
+  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
+  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
+info: testing umask effect on file creation
+  error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
+  error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
+
+
+
So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
+Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
+directory.
+
+
Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
+BTS report #594498
+
+
Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
+script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
+http://github.com/gebi/fs-test.
+
+