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Article #2366

Re: Passing on unwanted groups

#2366
From: Peter da Silva
Date: Sat, 18 Aug 1990 17:12
32 lines
2037 bytes
In article <1990Aug17.155959.1331@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
> In article <49289@olivea.atc.olivetti.com> jerry@olivey.olivetti.com (Jerry Aguirre) writes:
> >... the stressed out sysadmin is probably going to run the expire
> >or rebuild as root.  If he is running C news then the ownerships will
> >be wrong and stress will turn to panic.  The damn tools should at least
> >abort if they are not being run as the news owner.

> How?  It is not easy to tell.

Huh? It's hard to determine the login name, but it's easy enough to determine
if you've got the same user ID as a known login (such as the news owner).

> In particular, it is *very* difficult to
> reliably determine the login name or user id from the shell in a portable
> way.

Sounds like a job for a portable custom C program. Doing a "getpwnam" on
the news owner and then comparing "pw_uid" with "getuid" should be completely
portable.

Or do what I do, chown all the files after creating them.

> There is also a difference between deliberately confronting people with
> unfamiliar conventions, and expecting them to remember familiar ones
> ("the files belong to whoever you were when you created them").

Unfamiliar conventions like "root can do everything"?
-- 
Peter da Silva.   `-_-'
+1 713 274 5180.   'U`
peter@ferranti.com (currently not working)
peter@hackercorp.com
Technical Details
Message-ID: <RGA59O9@ggpc2.ferranti.com>
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utstat!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!lavaca.uh.edu!uhnix1!sugar!ficc!peter
References: <1990Aug15.164651.26664@zoo.toronto.edu> <49281@olivea.atc.olivetti.com> <1990Aug16.163107.1166@zoo.toronto.edu> <49289@olivea.atc.olivetti.com> <1990Aug17.155959.1331@zoo.toronto.edu>

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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utstat!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!lavaca.uh.edu!uhnix1!sugar!ficc!peter
From: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Passing on unwanted groups
Message-ID: <RGA59O9@ggpc2.ferranti.com>
Date: 18 Aug 90 17:12:15 GMT
References: <1990Aug15.164651.26664@zoo.toronto.edu> <49281@olivea.atc.olivetti.com> <1990Aug16.163107.1166@zoo.toronto.edu> <49289@olivea.atc.olivetti.com> <1990Aug17.155959.1331@zoo.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva)
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
Lines: 27