non-superuser chown(2)s considered harmful

Tom Christiansen tchrist at convex.COM
Sat Dec 8 16:21:45 AEST 1990


As was pointed out to me by Dick Dunn <rcd at ico.isc.com>, there's also the
problem of being able to create files you can't get rid of or touch
without superuser intervention.  A tar or cpio extract of directories
containing files owned by another user will create this scenario.  Once
the directory is owned by someone else, you can't change it back, so you
can't delete the files, and you can't delete the directory because it's not
empty.  You shouldn't have to get superuser help to fix something you
yourself did.

--tom
--
Tom Christiansen		tchrist at convex.com	convex!tchrist
"With a kernel dive, all things are possible, but it sure makes it hard
 to look at yourself in the mirror the next morning."  -me



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