mkdir has stopped working - SCO Xenix

Barry Margolin barmar at think.com
Fri Apr 19 05:59:39 AEST 1991


In article <veit.671986606 at du9ds3> veit at du9ds3.uni-duisburg.de (Holger Veit) writes:
>In <15884 at smoke.brl.mil> gwyn at smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>>On many UNIX implementations, presumably including yours,
>>"mkdir" must be installed set-UID 0 in order to work.
>But Mark Baker said above, that even root cannot make a directory. So, setuid 0
>for mkdir is obviously not the problem.

No, it still could be the problem.  Maybe his mkdir is still setuid, but
with a non-root owner.  When root runs it, his UID is changed to that of
the incorrect owner, and then he can't do the privileged system call.

Remember, setuid even affects the superuser.

--
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar at think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar



More information about the Comp.unix.questions mailing list