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To: Bill Paul <wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu>
cc: bugs@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: bin/1947: Something is really hosed with the passwd command, or something 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 02 Nov 1996 22:52:40 EST."
             <199611030352.WAA00765@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu> 
Date: Sun, 03 Nov 1996 04:35:21 -0800
Message-ID: <5879.847024521@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Sender: owner-bugs@freebsd.org
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> If you look in local_passwd.c (grep for EACCES -- this is a bit of a 
> gotcha: the 'Permission denied' message is printed by the err() function
> rather than being in the code), you'll see where this error message 
> comes from. I think the problem may be that you su'ed to another user.

Well, actually not.  I was myself, but I've since seen this problem
happen 3 times more in -current and am now totally mystified - it's
not a passwd problem, it's something a lot weirder.

For lack of a better description - my userid just goes away.  Ha ha,
no, please, put away the net - let me explain!  I'll be logged in as
myself, su for something or another, then exit the su shell and come
back (heh) to myself.  Tada, I'm now unable to write files in my own
home directory or do anything as myself - any file I attempt to open,
/usr/bin/passwd included on that occasion, is a "Permission denied"
and the *only* thing which fixes it is to chown the files I own to
myself again (even though an ls -l showed them to be owned by me
already).  Doesn't matter that I've just done this a few minutes
previously, during the previous event, I have to do it again.  Logging
out and back in again does not have any effect.

Investigating - this one is annoying and strange.

						Jordan