Ultrix mail fun

[John Haxby]

./usr/bin/mail is setgid kmem because is bases lock time-outs on the load average which is gets from /dev/kmem. [I know this is wrong, it'll be fixed in a possible future release]

I don't believe binmail checks the permissions on /usr/spool/mail (or whatever the alias is), but it is fairly careful about the permissions and properties of files that it tries to drop mail in. Basically, the files should be read-write by the owner and no one else and not be links or symlinks, and, of course, the owner should be the intended recipient. There is some fairly horrible code in there to make sure that this is so, otherwise you get some interesting ways of breaking into mail and things when th












e mail spool directory is globally writable. It doesn't sounds as though this is the problem though. Have you set things up so that users cannot append mail to their own spool directories?
-- 
John Haxby, Definitively Wrong.
Digital				<jch at wessex.rdg.dec.com>
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