[1544] in linux-net channel archive
Re: Smail 3.1.29.1: directory permission problems
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (H. Peter Anvin)
Fri Dec 22 05:29:26 1995
To: submit-linux-dev-net@ratatosk.yggdrasil.com
From: hpa@freya.yggdrasil.com (H. Peter Anvin)
Date: 21 Dec 1995 03:48:45 GMT
Reply-To: hpa@storm.net (H. Peter Anvin)
Followup to: <m0tSDuG-000CAkC@gratis.xgroup.ernet.in>
By author: raju@gratis.xgroup.ernet.in (Raj Mathur)
In newsgroup: linux.dev.net
>=20
> If you create a new user on the system, that user cannot receive mail
> until you manually create an empty mail file for him/her with the
> proper permissions. The issue seems to be that Smail cannot create
> files in the mail spool directory (/var/spool/mail on my system) since
> it sets it's UID and GID to that of the mail receiver before trying to
> open the file (with O_CREAT set).
>=20
> The mail directory is mode 775, owner root, group mail. Smail is
> setuid root, of course.
>=20
> While not averse to hacking Smail to get the right behaviour, I would
> like to know if anyone else has seen (or better, fixed!) this problem.
>=20
Pardon a dumb question, but what's wrong with creating a mail file at
account creation time? On one syste, I use the following script to
create accounts:
!/bin/sh
#
# Script to add a new user
#
home=3D/home
mail=3D/usr/spool/mail
defshell=3D/bin/tcsh
echo -n 'User ID: '
read uid
echo -n 'Username: '
read uname
echo -n 'Full name: '
read fname
echo -n 'Main group: '
read group
echo -n 'Supplementary groups: '
read supgrp
if [ "x$supgrp" !=3D "x" ]; then
supgrp=3D"-G $supgrp"
fi
echo -n "Shell: [$defshell] "
read shell
if [ "x$shell" =3D "x" ]; then
shell=3D$defshell
fi
echo "Creating user $uname ($uid) with home directory $home/$uname"
echo "mail file $mail/$uname and shell $shell"
/etc/useradd -u $uid -g $group $supgrp -d $home/$uname -s $shell $uname
mkdir $home/$uname
chown $uname.$group $home/$uname
if [ $group =3D "nueml" ]; then
mode=3D751
else
mode=3D711
fi
chmod $mode $home/$uname
touch $mail/$uname
chown $uname.mail $mail/$uname
chmod 660 $mail/$uname
chfn -f "$fname" $uname
passwd $uname
--=20
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