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- From: vulture@imperial.ac.uk (Thomas Sippel - Dau)
- Subject: Re: Indigo as server for a RS600 client - was: NFS links from RS6000 server to SGI client
- Message-ID: <1992Nov20.172633.26750@cc.ic.ac.uk>
- Sender: vulture@carrion.cc.ic.ac.uk (Thomas Sippel - Dau)
- Nntp-Posting-Host: cscgc
- Reply-To: cmaae47@imperial.ac.uk
- Organization: Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine
- References: <34067@adm.brl.mil> <1992Nov14.021925.14641@ultra.com> <JOOST.92Nov19220002@ori.cadlab.de> <1992Nov19.230854.5523@sunova.ssc.gov>
- Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 17:26:33 GMT
- Lines: 27
-
- In article <1992Nov19.230854.5523@sunova.ssc.gov>, lroberts@bottom.ssc.gov (Lee Roberts) writes:
- -
- - Apparently, Sun's tar performs a chown on the extracted file before writing
- - the file contents. On a BSD system such as the Sun, this chown fails for the
- - non-superuser and uid/gid match the user. When writing to the SGI NFS server,
- - the chown command succeeds (it's being performed on a System V system) and
- - changes the ownership to match the uid/gid in the tar archive. Since the
- - file ownership has changed, tar cannot write the contents.
-
- Sounds like "standard compliance by cock-up", which of course does not make
- it unbelievable. The POSIX standard (IEEE 1003.1) actually addresses this
- to some length on pp 274-9, section B10, i.e. in the rationale rather than
- the formal standard)
-
- The gist there is that for system security (if nothing else) tar processors
- should behave differently when run by root than when run by a user, users
- should not, for example, be able to create special files. Just relying on
- the chown to fail when executed for a user seems like a broken tar to me.
-
- Thomas
-
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- *** This is the operative statement, all previous statements are inoperative.
- * email: cmaae47 @ ic.ac.uk (Thomas Sippel - Dau) (uk.ac.ic on Janet)
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- * snail: Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine
- * The Center for Computing Services, Kensington SW7 2BX, Great Britain
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