🚀 go-pugleaf

In <Bz882q.L2.2@cs.cmu.edu> cline+@cs.cmu.edu (Kenneth Cline) writes:

| 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?

It is basicly because tar was written under V7 unix where only
the superuser could give files away, and it seemed silly to add
a check in tar to see if you were superuser.  When the S3/S5
versions of unix decided that they didn't like that model, a number
of things broke, including tar.  More recent versions of tar do
the check to see if you are superuser, as some other postings
mentioned.

By the way, the problem only occurs when directories are created,
in most cases, since the chown is done after the file is extracted,
and therefore there are no problems with regular files.
--
Let no one tell me that silence gives consent,  |   Dave Olson
because whoever is silent dissents.             |   Silicon Graphics, Inc.
    Maria Isabel Barreno                        |   olson@sgi.com