[Mailman-Users] Permissions on Symbolic Links Files

[Mark Sapiro]

Barry Finkel wrote:

>I have on my Mailman 2.1.10 production system and my 2.1.11 test system
>both created from the SourceForge source and installed on Ubuntu dapper
>via packages I built:
>
>mailman% ls -al /var/lib/mailman
>total 40
>drwxrwsr-x 10 root list 4096 2007-02-28 11:11 .
>drwxr-xr-x 22 root root 4096 2008-04-04 13:31 ..
>lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   20 2008-06-30 16:13 bin -> /usr/lib/mailman/bin
>lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   21 2008-06-30 16:13 cron -> /usr/lib/mailman/cron
>lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   24 2008-06-30 16:13 Mailman -> /usr/lib/mailman/Mailman
>lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   24 2008-06-30 16:13 scripts -> /usr/lib/mailman/scripts
><<Non-relevant lines from the "ls -al" listing have been removed.>>
>mailman%
>mailman# ls -al /usr/lib/mailman 
>total 36
>drwxr-xr-x  7 root list  4096 2007-02-28 11:11 .
>drwxr-xr-x 48 root root 12288 2008-06-09 12:24 ..
>drwxr-xr-x  2 root list  4096 2008-07-23 14:55 bin
>drwxr-xr-x  2 root list  4096 2008-07-23 14:55 cron
>drwxrwsr-x  2 root list  4096 2008-07-23 14:55 mail
>drwxr-xr-x 11 root list  4096 2008-07-23 14:55 Mailman
>drwxr-xr-x  2 root list  4096 2008-07-23 14:55 scripts
>mailman#
>
>When I run check_perms it complains:
>
>     mailman# check_perms
>     directory permissions must be 02775: /var/lib/mailman/Mailman
>     directory permissions must be 02775: /var/lib/mailman/bin
>     directory permissions must be 02775: /var/lib/mailman/cron
>     directory permissions must be 02775: /var/lib/mailman/scripts
>     Problems found: 4
>     Re-run as list (or root) with -f flag to fix
>     mailman# 
>
>As Mailman is running fine, I do not want to change the permissions
>on the symbolic links.  Is this correct?  I have 755 for the permissions
>on the real files to which the symbolic links point.


You can't change the permissions on a symlink itself anyway. Any
attempt to do so will attempt to change the target.


>Is check_perms reporting on the permissions of the symlinks or the
>permissions of the real files to which the symbolic links point?


The targets.


>What problems would I see if I do not have group write not "02"
>on these four files?


Typically these directories are SETGID and group writable. The fact
that they are not SETGID means that anything created subordinate to
them will be created with the group of the creator and not the 'list'
group. In practice the contents of these 4 directories are normally
only read, so as long as everything is world readable, it will work.

But if you applied a patch to some .py file in the Mailman directory,
Mailman processes running as group 'list' might not have permission to
update the corresponding .pyc file.

I have to wonder why you are doing this with symlinks at all. It looks
like what you really want is to run configure with

--prefix=/usr/lib/mailman  (the default), and
--with-var-prefix=/var/lib/mailman

or something similar.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan