Permissive Permissions

[Tony Facca]

Just a "recap" on the situation..

Original posting:

>>On three different Irises in three different groups (checked within the last
>>few minutes), / was world-writable (apparently shipped as such).  Not funny.

I said:

>I have seen this on the 3000's as well.  I believe they were shipped that way
>and (I'm not positive but..) I think each time the OS was revised I had to 
>reset the permission on / after installation.

Margaret Miluska said:

>>Yes, we have 3130's and all of them had always extremely "permissive
>>permissions" (777) on all important directories, no matter which 
>>version of op sys they ran. All machines brand new. I can't understand
>>what makes SGI ship the machines that way. (Anybody at SGI cares to
>>comment ?...)

Another poster asks:

>>>     I fail to see what the problem is?  / has world-writable, so what?!
>>> I would be concerned if it didn't.

To which just about everyone said:

>>It is a security problem -- 

Tom Mitchell (of SGI) adds:

>>True.  It is wrong.  Also simple to fix.

[editorial comment:  Sure its simple, if you notice it before anyone can do 
damage.  Bye the way, how many people checked / on their systems after this
posting just to be sure?  I know I did.]

>>Will the original poster email me the Serial Numbers of
>>the machines so I can follow up on this.  I am mitch at sgi.com 

Dave Olson (also of SGI):

>>It turns out that when we made the master drives from which
>>the shipped drives are copied, no one noticed that
				 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>/ was permission 777.  mkfs created the root of the new

[editorial comment:  Wink, Nudge, Nudge, say no more..]

>>all future releases will no longer have this problem (note that


Well, that was a lot of fun, thank you SGI for jumping in.  This problem has
been bothering me for a couple of years now, but I never bothered to complain
about it.  One last question, the original poster mentioned that he's seen the
problem on the 4D's.  We have several 20's and some 70's and I haven't seen it
on these machines.  Which "master drives" are you talking about?  Is it more
prone to be 3000's than 4D's?  (I guess that's two questions).

--
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Tony Facca                     |     phone: 216-433-8318
NASA Lewis Research Center     |    
Cleveland, Ohio  44135         |     email: fsfacca at lerc08.nas.nasa.gov
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