phil@wubios.wustl.edu (J. Philip Miller) (01/31/89)
I accessed a file with elm -f /a/b where the file b had its permission bits set at 644 and I was not the owner (nor the group). elm allowed me to delete mail messages contained within that file :-( Running SUN/OS 4.0. any ideas?
jbayer@ispi.UUCP (Jonathan Bayer) (02/01/89)
In article <294@wubios.wustl.edu> phil@wubios.UUCP (J. Philip Miller) writes: >I accessed a file with elm -f /a/b where the file b had its permission bits >set at 644 and I was not the owner (nor the group). elm allowed me to >delete mail messages contained within that file :-( Yes, but were the messages actually deleted? JB -- Jonathan Bayer Beware: The light at the end of the Intelligent Software Products, Inc. tunnel may be an oncoming dragon 19 Virginia Ave. ...uunet!ispi!jbayer Rockville Centre, NY 11570 (516) 766-2867 jbayer@ispi
phil@wubios.wustl.edu (J. Philip Miller) (02/01/89)
In article <432@ispi.UUCP> jbayer@ispi.UUCP (Jonathan Bayer) writes: >In article <294@wubios.wustl.edu> phil@wubios.UUCP (J. Philip Miller) writes: >>I accessed a file with elm -f /a/b where the file b had its permission bits >>set at 644 and I was not the owner (nor the group). elm allowed me to >>delete mail messages contained within that file :-( > > >Yes, but were the messages actually deleted? > >JB Yes, they were actually deleted. In addition, if it was the only message in the folder the entire folder was deleted :( with more experimentation, it appears that elm was sensitive to the permission bits of the directory, rather than of the particular folder. When writing to the folder it also changed the user and group to the process that was doing the writing. Sorry I am not enough of a Unix guru to understand the details, but seems that this violates my intuition which would say that if the file is not writable by me under ordinary circumstances, then elm should not write it either. -phil