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Article #1130

Re: FIX: Losing Preferences

#1130
From: Robert Lutwak
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 14:14
47 lines
2314 bytes
In article <BuKzCG.4KE@monitor.com> shawn@monitor.com writes:
> Sorry if this is a rehash for some of you.
> 
> A number of folks have had problems with folks on their network losing  
their  
> Preference settings (or rather, not having them stay changed) when they  
log  
> out and back in.
> 
> This generally will happen when a user's home directory is on an network  
NFS  
> mounted drive.  The problem is that Preferences runs SUID root and  
expects  
> root access to the device it is writing to.
> 
> The fix is to export the server volume with root access to the machines  
that  
> need it, or you can export it to the world with root access (obvious  
security  
> issues here).  In your /etc/exports file:
>      /Users -root=machine1:machine2:machine3 etc.......
> to allow certain machines root access to /User and:
>      /Users -anon=0
> to allow the world root access to /User.
> 
> Am I to understand that 3.0 does not SUID to store preferences?
> 
> -- 
> Shawn Broderick
> Monitor Company / Information Engineering
> Director, BCS NeXT
> shawn@monitor.com

I'd just like to add another problem that can lead to this symptom:

If the user's home directory is on a machine running an old UNIX that
only supports 12 character file names (like your IBM RT AIX 2.2.1),
then NeXTdefaults.D and .NeXTdefaults.L alternately clobber each other
every time the workspace attempts to update the database.

My (albeit clumsy) solution has been to create a userdefaults directory
on one of the NeXTs and link a userdefaults/username/.NeXT subdirectory  
from it to each user's root directory.

Note:  the recycler doesn't work unless you 
then link a .NextTrash directory from the user's root directory to
the userdefaults/username/.NeXT directory).
Technical Details
Message-ID: <1992Sep15.141419.21332@athena.mit.edu>
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!europa.asd.contel.com!darwin.sura.net!spool.mu.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-picayune.mit.edu!news
References: <BuKzCG.4KE@monitor.com>

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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!europa.asd.contel.com!darwin.sura.net!spool.mu.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-picayune.mit.edu!news
From: robert@amo.mit.edu(Robert Lutwak)
Subject: Re: FIX:  Losing Preferences
Message-ID: <1992Sep15.141419.21332@athena.mit.edu>
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Organization: Massachvsetts Institvte of Technology
References: <BuKzCG.4KE@monitor.com>
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 14:14:19 GMT
Lines: 47