From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Jul 24 19:20:40 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id TAA08664 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 19:20:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dg-rtp.dg.com (dg-rtp.rtp.dg.com [128.222.1.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id TAA08658 for ; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 19:20:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: by dg-rtp.dg.com (5.4R3.10/dg-rtp-v02) id AA14831; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 22:20:05 -0400 Received: from ponds by dg-rtp.dg.com.rtp.dg.com; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 22:20 EDT Received: from lakes.water.net (lakes [10.0.0.3]) by ponds.water.net (8.8.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id VAA00689; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 21:38:46 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from rivers@localhost) by lakes.water.net (8.8.5/8.6.9) id VAA01028; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 21:47:43 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 21:47:43 -0400 (EDT) From: Thomas David Rivers Message-Id: <199707250147.VAA01028@lakes.water.net> To: andreas@klemm.gtn.com, ponds!cdsnet.net!mrcpu Subject: ownership - root or bin? (was Re: sendmail complains about being unable to write his pid file) Cc: ponds!FreeBSD.ORG!hackers, ponds!nethelp.no!sthaug, ponds!lambert.org!terry Content-Type: text Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk This is likely an old thread - but I wanted to add a point no one else has mentioned... I recall working on some boxes in the early, heady, days of UNIX (early 80s) where root did own everything in /bin and /usr/bin. The reason we found for changing this was that an errant program could accidently get permissions to do all sorts of nasty things (mostly kernel issues...) making it easy for someone to become root, etc... creating "bin" and having that uid own the programs was a nice way to avoid these catastrophes. Personally, I'd rather have root ownership restricted to as few files as possible... - Dave Rivers -