[Tutor] Re: permissions trouble -solved.

[Kirk Bailey]

ok, I got it.

The file referred to is in the lists dir.
/www/www.tinylist.org/cgi-bin/lists/aliases.tinylist
lists dir is chmod 755, owner nobody, and the files in there are chmod 644, 
owner nobody.

in /etc/mail we create a SOFT link.
ln -s /www/www.tinylist.org/cgi-bin/lists/aliases.tinylist aliases.tinylist
We have sendmail.cf point at ./etc/mail/aliass.tinylist':

ln -s /www/www.tinylist.org/cgi-bin/lists/aliases.tinylist aliases.tinylist

I was root when I created the link. This makes the sendmail and operating 
system happy. It reads the file just fine, but creates the db right here in 
/etc/mail, where it can write as much as it pleases.

I licked it. Thank you one and all for all the good advice.


Neil W Rickert wrote:
> Kirk Bailey <idiot1@netzero.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>>ok, I have an alias in /etc/mail, called aliases.tinylist; this is able to be 
>>read by sendmail since I edited the sendmail.cf file, and it will compile it 
>>without error.  the /mail dir is owned by root, and is chmod 755.
> 
> 
>>the file aliases.tinylist is owned by nobody currently, although in certain 
>>tests it was owned by an unpriviliged user called grumpy, and it worked.
> 
> 
> That's a security risk.  The ability to add aliases should be tightly
> restricted.
> 
> 
>>I could issue a echo statement from the command prompt as grumpy, appending to 
>>the file, and it worked, regardless of what the current directory was.
> 
> 
>>But when I tried to do it as grumpy running a SCRIPT (in python) it refused 
>>permission to write to the file. odd, grumpy could do it from the command 
>>prompt...
> 
> 
> I don't know why you think this is a sendmail problem.  From your
> description, it would seem to be a python problem.
> 
>  -NWR
> 
> 


-- 

end

Respectfully,
              Kirk D Bailey


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