🚀 go-pugleaf

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.

But I have changed my Preferences to mode 755 so that no one but
root can change the clock time.  Why should Preferences need to be
suid in order to write to the home dir of the person logged in?
(I have been noticing this problem as well, keyboard preferences
aren't getting saved)

>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.

No way, not going to open up security holes like that... I want a
better answer... :-)

-- 
David Lemson                                                (217) 244-1205
University of Illinois NeXT Campus Consultant / CCSO NeXT Lab System Admin
Internet : lemson@uiuc.edu                UUCP :...!uiucuxc!uiucux1!lemson 
NeXTMail accepted                                  BITNET : LEMSON@UIUCVMD

>>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.
>
>No way, not going to open up security holes like that... I want a
>better answer... :-)

NFS <=> No File Security
	-  -    -

louie

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).