sticky(7)

sticky7

Sticky text and append-only directories

Overview

A special file mode, called the sticky bit (mode S_ISTXT), is used to indicate special treatment for directories. It is ignored for regular files. See chmod(2) or the file ⟨sys/stat.h⟩ for an explanation of file modes.

Sticky directories

A directory whose `sticky bit' is set becomes an append-only directory, or, more accurately, a directory in which the deletion of files is restricted. A file in a sticky directory may only be removed or renamed by a user if the user has write permission for the directory and the user is the owner of the file, the owner of the directory, or the super-user. This feature is usefully applied to directories such as /tmp which must be publicly writable but should deny users the license to arbitrarily delete or rename each others' files.

Any user may create a sticky directory. See chmod(1) for details about modifying file modes.

Releases

35 releases since FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE; the text changed 22 times.

  1. 8.4
  2. 9.0
  3. 9.1
  4. 9.2
  5. 9.3
  6. 10.0
  7. 10.1
  8. 10.2
  9. 10.3
  10. 10.4
  11. 11.0
  12. 11.1
  13. 11.2
  14. 11.3
  15. 11.4
  16. 12.0
  17. 12.1
  18. 12.2
  19. 12.3
  20. 12.4
  21. 13.0–13.2
  22. 13.3–14.5
  23. 15.0–16.0

History

A sticky command appeared in AT&T UNIX v32.

Bugs

Neither open(2) nor mkdir(2) will create a file with the sticky bit set.

From base 16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79 in FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.