NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/comp/os/linux/22327

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-31 | 1.6 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!think.com!spool.mu.edu!agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!wariat!kf8nh
From: [e-mail] (Brandon S. Allbery)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux
Subject: Re: known problem with email...buy why?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 92 18:25:09 EST
References: <[e-mail]>
Distribution: world
Organization: Brandon S. Allbery's Personal System
Lines: 24

pmacdona@sanjuan (Peter MacDonald) writes:
> Here is a shot in the dark:  doesn't a process have to be running as
> root to use "chown"?  Elm is sgid mail.

So is Linus planning to add quotas to Linux, or is there some other reason
for this bogosity?  (Like "he didn't think of it" --- depends on whether his
experience is with BSD or System V.  Not intended to be an anti-Linu[sx]
flame.)  Insofar as I have been able to determine, BSD disk quotas are the
only reason BSD retains this particular bit of prehistoric behavior;
otherwise, the System V behavior (anyone can chown a file they own, but if
they aren't root suid/sgid will be cleared in the process) makes more sense.
All the other gets you is the need to use suid root on programs that
shouldn't need it (like mail)... and accurate (although, IMHO, largely
worthless outside universities) disk quotas.

(Yeah, somewhere in one of the standards, I think the Orange book stuff,
the BSD behavior is claimed to be a security feature.  It's a feature to
force programs to be gratuitously setuid root???  Whoever wrote that part of
the spec traded true security for a false sense of security.)

++Brandon

He's BAAAACK! Brandon S. Allbery     NOTE NEW ADDRESS!!! [e-mail]