In article <1992Oct30.183300.14296@athena.mit.edu> zabka@infpav4.kfk.de (Zabka) writes:
quoted text
> 
> 1. Logged in as nonprivileged user rza
> 
> 2. rza % ll /etc/profile
> -rw-r--r--    root    root    <date>          /etc/profile
>                               
> 3. rza % emacs /etc/profile
> 
>    ...edit...edit...
>    ^X^S
>  
>  --> uemacs tells me: wrote 23 lines
> 
>               Although the file should have been readonly!
> 
> 4. rza % ll /etc/profile
> -rw-------    rza     users   <date>          /etc/profile
> 
>       !!!!! ___OOOPS!____ !!!!
> 
>  I think everybody should be warned about this behaviour. Haven't looked
>  at the sources yet, but I expect it to be a bug in uemacs rather than in 
>  Linux.

It looks like rza has write permissions on directory /etc.  By default,
uemacs renames the original file to a backup name, then writes the changed
file as a brand-new file, then unlinks the backup after the successful
write.  A user does not have to have write permission on a file to rename
or delete it, just write permission on the **directory** where the file lives.

Check the permissions on /etc - you should find something like:

drwxrwxrwx   root  system     <date>  /etc

-- 
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|     Joe M. Doss, Jr.                     (standard disclaimer applies)  |
|  jdoss@jmd386.lonestar.org                  <insert cute quote here>    |
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