Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] net-mail/mailbase-1.1 and access rights of /var/spool/mail
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2013 19:16:19
Message-Id: 20130129211521.17b9f4f8@khamul.example.com
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] net-mail/mailbase-1.1 and access rights of /var/spool/mail by Mick
1 On Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:36:06 +0000
2 Mick <michaelkintzios@×××××.com> wrote:
3
4 > On Tuesday 29 Jan 2013 10:19:16 Alan McKinnon wrote:
5 > > On Tue, 29 Jan 2013 06:37:47 +0000
6 > >
7 > > Mick <michaelkintzios@×××××.com> wrote:
8 > > > Hi All,
9 > > >
10 > > > I got this message when net-mail/mailbase-1.1 was emerged:
11 > > >
12 > > > * Messages for package net-mail/mailbase-1.1:
13 > > > * Your //var/spool/mail/ directory permissions differ from
14 > > > * those which mailbase wants to set it to (03775).
15 > > > * If you did not change them on purpose, consider running:
16 > > > *
17 > > > * chown root:mail //var/spool/mail/
18 > > > * chmod 03775 //var/spool/mail/
19 > > >
20 > > > Running this chmod changed access rights from:
21 > > > drwxrwxr-x 2 root mail 4096 Jan 28 19:57 mail
22 > > >
23 > > > to a sticky-fied:
24 > > > drwxrwsr-t 2 root mail 4096 Jan 28 19:57 mail
25 > > >
26 > > > Any idea why are the sticky bits for group and others required?
27 > >
28 > > sticky for group so that all sub-dirs and files in them are owned by
29 > > the mail group. Without it, they would be owned by the user running
30 > > "mailx" and the mail system can no longer manager them.
31 > >
32 > > sticky for others is so that you can't delete my mail but you can
33 > > still create your own mail spool files. Identical logic to /tmp
34 > > (assuming that you are in the mail group)
35 >
36 > Thanks Alan, it makes sense now. No one other than mail are in the
37 > mail group in this box (my laptop):
38 >
39 > $ less /etc/group | grep mail
40 > mail:x:12:mail
41 >
42 > I have rkhunter and some cron jobs using ssmtp to email me log info,
43 > but they have been running as root. That's why I hadn't experienced
44 > a problem with the previous access rights. I wonder why this was
45 > picked up in the 1.1 version and not previously - perhaps a test was
46 > added on purpose in the ebuild.
47
48 There's relevant info and bug numbers in the mailbase Changelog:
49
50 *mailbase-1.1 (12 Oct 2012)
51
52 12 Oct 2012; Eray Aslan <eras@g.o> +mailbase-1.1.ebuild:
53 Make /var/spool/mail/ directory setgid and sticky - bugs #424431
54 #426962 #438062 and various others
55
56
57 --
58 Alan McKinnon
59 alan.mckinnon@×××××.com