From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG  Tue Jan  9 04:19:13 2007
Return-Path: <owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52])
	by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9C52216A407
	for <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>;
	Tue,  9 Jan 2007 04:19:13 +0000 (UTC)
	(envelope-from malcolm.kay@internode.on.net)
Received: from ipmail01.adl2.internode.on.net (ipmail01.adl2.internode.on.net
	[203.16.214.140])
	by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1AFCF13C44C
	for <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>;
	Tue,  9 Jan 2007 04:19:12 +0000 (UTC)
	(envelope-from malcolm.kay@internode.on.net)
Received: from ppp125-203.lns2.adl4.internode.on.net (HELO alpha.home)
	([121.44.125.203])
	by ipmail01.adl2.internode.on.net with ESMTP; 09 Jan 2007 14:49:03 +1030
X-IronPort-AV: i="4.13,161,1167571800"; 
	d="scan'208"; a="71466182:sNHT18780407422"
From: Malcolm Kay <malcolm.kay@internode.on.net>
Organization: at home
To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2007 14:49:01 +1030
User-Agent: KMail/1.8
References: <45A2884F.7010405@chapman.edu>
In-Reply-To: <45A2884F.7010405@chapman.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
  charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline
Message-Id: <200701091449.01739.malcolm.kay@internode.on.net>
Cc: Jay Chandler <chandler@chapman.edu>
Subject: Re: Permissions Question
X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5
Precedence: list
List-Id: User questions <freebsd-questions.freebsd.org>
List-Unsubscribe: <http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions>, 
	<mailto:freebsd-questions-request@freebsd.org?subject=unsubscribe>
List-Archive: <http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions>
List-Post: <mailto:freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
List-Help: <mailto:freebsd-questions-request@freebsd.org?subject=help>
List-Subscribe: <http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions>, 
	<mailto:freebsd-questions-request@freebsd.org?subject=subscribe>
X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2007 04:19:13 -0000

On Tue, 9 Jan 2007 04:37 am, Jay Chandler wrote:
> Sorry for the dumb question this morning-- caffeine hasn't yet
> worked its wondrous magic upon my person.
>
> I've got a user who needs to be able to view (read only) the
> aliases file.  We'll grant him root access a few weeks after
> the eventual heat-death of the universe, so how would you all
> go about doing this?
>
> I've considered allowing him to run a local copy of the
> praliases command, but that chokes on the /etc/mail/aliases
> permissions...

I am confused (or someone is).
On all the FreeBSD systems I have immediate access to the file
/etc/mail/aliases has the default permissions -rw-r--r--, in 
other words is readable by anyone. On the other 
hand /etc/mail/aliases.db is sometimes -rw-r----- and sometimes 
-rw-r--r-- but since it is only an encoded version of aliases 
and additional restrictions would seem useless.

I can imagine some might object to reason setting either of these 
o+r, but this does seem to be the norm.

Perhaps someone else has other views. Or perhaps this is some 
variation when using profix, qmail etc. in place of sendmail.

Malcolm
 
>
> To complicate things, the file etc/mail/aliases is actually
> an NFS mounted file shared between all our mx boxes, and he
> only needs to access it from a designated machine.
>
> Thoughts?  My apologies if this is unclear...