On Sun, 29 Jun 1997 10:02:07 -0400 David R Nessl <[log in to unmask]> said: >The technical problem in Unix is symlinks: a clever user could move >their /u/username/list-archives directory to another place and create >the symlink /u/username/list-archives -> newplace. That assumes the user owns another directory on the system that is not within the /u/username tree, which on a normal system would not be the case. There will always be idiots using /tmp for this purpose, but they will quickly learn that there are, er, drawbacks :-) As for people who allow world write to their directories and files or use their userid for password, they shouldn't be surprised if other people are pirating their directories and loading their bills. >Then, LISTSERV's archive writing would still work but the `chown -R` >would not. Just write your own program that traverses symbolic links, it should take about 30 min. If you don't want local code, I suspect that security add-ons exist for AIX which give you ACLs and in general greater control over file ownership and security. An even simpler alternative would be to put the per-user directory somewhere that the users can't access at all. It is actually a very bad idea to put these files under a Joe User directory where they can be manipulated randomly by someone who does not necessarily understand what these files are for and how they work. LISTSERV assumes that the files are not being tampered with by a third party while it uses them. I'll bet a large sum that the average user will assume that the digest file is here to be freely edited without worries, that these weird large unprintable dbwhatever files are designed to be removed so you can save disk space, and that the other log files can also be edited freely and without precaution. Then you'll be wondering why you get strange errors in your LISTSERV log :-) I just don't see any reason to give users a free run on these files. >Because of our widespread use of sub-lists, *not* having recursion is >counter-intuitive to our users! Maybe but I think this is specific to UFL :-) Eric