tar, nfs, and restricted_chown

Article View: comp.sys.sgi.admin

Article #2

Back to comp.sys.sgi.admin Previous Next

From: Kenneth Cline
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 01:56

17 lines
1354 bytes

A user logged into a Sun4 was unable to extract tarred files (created
by another user) to a disk mounted on our SGI machine.  Apparently,
SunOs tar chowns the new file to the old user before reading its
contents, and subsequent operations fail due to ownership conflict.

The fix was to build a new kernel for the SGI with restricted_chown
set to 1.  Now, "tar x..." works fine, but I would like to know if
this is a bug in SunOs tar (maybe, calling chown prematurely), an SGI
bug (which doesn't seem as likely), or simply conflicting features.

I ask, because it is annoying to ship tar archives to other sites and
require the recipient to be super-user to extract the files, but in
general that seems to be necessary.  (n.b. rebuilding the kernel is a
bit much to ask the recipient).  Is there another solution short of
running homogeneous networks?

Ken

Technical Details

Message-ID: <Bz882q.L2.2@cs.cmu.edu>

Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!wupost!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!ogicse!das-news.harvard.edu!cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!cline

Show Full Headers

Complete Article Headers

Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!wupost!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!ogicse!das-news.harvard.edu!cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!cline
From: cline+@cs.cmu.edu (Kenneth Cline)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi.admin
Subject: tar, nfs, and restricted_chown
Message-ID: <Bz882q.L2.2@cs.cmu.edu>
Date: 14 Dec 92 01:56:47 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.Bz882q.L2.2
Sender: news@cs.cmu.edu (Usenet News System)
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
Lines: 17
Nntp-Posting-Host: proof.ergo.cs.cmu.edu