Does auto-update (or anything) chmod 777 automatically?

Does the new auto-update process (or theme installation) automatically chmod anything to 777?

no. only you can change permissions manually

Thanks samboll — a recursive grep does turn up instances of chmod(), but I don’t know the internals well enough to conclude anything:

$ svn info | grep URL
URL: https://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.7.1

$ grep -irl chmod * | wc -l
     35

I thought I’d better rephrase my question with some technical specifics:

• At Modwest, scripts run as the user that owns the script. The scripts live in the user’s homedir.
• So, at Modwest, a script by has write (or overwrite) access to files.

Since the WordPress codebase contains many chmod() calls, I am wondering if there is a circumstance in which it does a chmod g+w or chmod 777 (or similar) that sets additional write-permission bits on folders or files.

We are seeing multiple customer instances of WordPress spontaneously malfunction because of permissions changes.

A workaround to this problem is to edit your php.ini file

disable_functions = chmod

Search and add that directive in.

This will prevent wordpress from chmodding your files and directories.