In the next example we perform the following functions to show the effects of having the sticky bit set on a directory:

1.      Starting out in the root directory (/) logged in as tclark, we list child directory permissions using ls –l.  Note that the /shared directory and the /tmp directory have the sticky bit set, indicated by the letter ‘t’ in the last position of the permissions display.

2.      Change to the /shared directory and list the directory contents, showing 3 files … one each owned by abe, tclark, and root all with .dat suffixes.

3.      Attempt to delete all 3 files using rm *.dat and getting errors for the files owned by abe and root, but successfully deleting the file owned by tclark.

4.      Recreate the file owned by tclark that was just deleted.

5.      Switch to the root user by using the su command

6.      As root, remove the sticky bit from the /shared directory using the chmod o-t shared command.

7.      Switch back to the tclark user and reattempt step #3, this time successfully deleting all three files (even the file owned by root).