[TriLUG] Strange perms change..

[Brian A. Henning]

Hi folks,
  Quick question for pondering:

I've a perl script that runs as a cron job once a minute.  Inexplicably, I
started receiving crond e-mails saying ..."/usr/bin/perl: Bad interpreter:
Permission denied."

I nosed around and discovered that this was because, strangely, the user
execute bit had been cleared on all the files in the directory in which that
script resides.  chmod u+x fixed the problem, but I'm very curious for
insight as to why the user execute bit would have suddenly cleared itself..

I am running a Norton Corporate Edition (7.something I think) virus scan
from my Windoze XP machine that includes a SMB share that includes the
aforementioned directory.  The timing of the crond messages could
potentially (although I am unsure) coincide with the time that the virus
scanner reached into the mounted directory tree.  Is there any precedent of
Windows virus scanners futzing with file permissions on Samba shares?

Yes, I am aware that scanning the Linux machine from the Windows machine is
neither efficient nor exhaustive.  I just didn't bother deselecting the
mounted volume from the scanner's selection.

Thanks,
~Brian