[2793] in bugtraq
Re: SunOS 5.5 mailtool - stupid .forward symlink tricks
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Casper Dik)
Mon Jun 24 13:11:08 1996
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 12:18:45 +0200
Reply-To: Bugtraq List <BUGTRAQ@netspace.org>
From: Casper Dik <casper@holland.Sun.COM>
To: Multiple recipients of list BUGTRAQ <BUGTRAQ@netspace.org>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 17 Jun 1996 08:47:46 -0000."
<Pine.LNX.3.91.960617084350.29083A-100000@mailhost.emap.co.uk>
>On Thu, 30 May 1996, Neil Readwin wrote:
>
>> The SunOS 5.5 mailtool seems to follow symlinks when enabling the vacation
>> feature, so if you
>>
>> ln -s /var/mail/luser ~/.forward
>>
>> and then enable vacation it copies /var/mail/luser to ~/.forward and
>> appends "|/usr/bin/vacation me" to it (and moves the symlink to
>> ~/.forward..BACKUP - I'm not sure if you can do any damage using that
>> and I no longer have a 5.5 machine handy to check it). Neil.
>
>When I did this 5.5 mailtool just died with a segv leaving .forward and
>.forward..BACKUP there as symlinks. Sometimes .forward is there but is
>a zero length file. Race condition?
>
>This is on a newly installed Ultra 1 140 running 5.5. Did I miss
>something?
Yeah, you should make you rmailbox mode 660, group mail, for this trick to work.
The workaround is chmod 600 /var/mail/*. The files need not be group writable.
If you also make "keep" the default in /etc/mail/mailx.rc, then there should
be no problem with mailboxes reverting back to the default 660 mode.
(Needless to say that the bug in mailtool needs to be fixed anyway)
Casper
