Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 21:05:06 -0500 (CDT) From: Doug Lee <dgl@visi.com> To: Chris Fedde <chris@fedde.littleton.co.us> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Best /var/mail permissions? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0007312102280.346-100000@kirk.dsl.visi.com> In-Reply-To: <200008010155.e711t8d08090@fedde.littleton.co.us>
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Pine claims to share the locking scheme used by most mail delivery agents, so it can coordinate with the delivery agents and avoid corrupting mailboxes. This locking scheme involves creating a lock file in /var/mail, which Pine can't do without the 1777 permissions because it runs as the user. In my experience, if I don't give it the 1777 perms in /var/mail, it uses file locking techniques but takes noticeably more time at it. With 1777, it's really snappy. :-) But 1777 made me nervous, and that's why I'm here. :-) -- Doug Lee dgl@visi.com http://www.visi.com/~dgl On Mon, 31 Jul 2000, Chris Fedde wrote: > On Mon, 31 Jul 2000 19:39:18 -0500 (CDT) Doug Lee wrote: > +------------------ > | Pine wants me to set mode 1777 on /var/mail, and doing so makes Pine much > | faster at some operations like expunge and checking for new mail when I > | hit `n' at the end of the message index. `make world' seems to reset > | /var/mail to 770 however. I know mode 1777 lets users slip files up to > | their quota limits into /var/mail but know of no other dangers to that > | mode. > | > | Is there a major reason I should not (or should, for that matter) use mode > | 1777 for /var/mail? > +------------------ > > I'd be concerned about making this directory anyu kind of 777. There are > probably a few race conditions that could be exploited when deleting and > creating mail folders. Of course if these conditions are being exploited > you probably have other problems too ;-) > > What's pine tucking up there that it needs world write for anyway? > > chris > > -- > Chris Fedde > 303 773 9134 > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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