[9fans] Creating new mail users; mail -c

[9fans] Creating new mail users; mail -c

[Anthony Sorace]

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On my system, /mail/box is mode 775. This matches what's on sources.

So... how is the mail -c call in newuser supposed to work for normal
(ie: not in group sys) users?


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Re: [9fans] Creating new mail users; mail -c

[Russ Cox]

It doesn't.  Such users have to ask nicely for
someone to create the mailbox directory on the
file system console.

Russ

Re: [9fans] Creating new mail users; mail -c

[erik quanstrom]

> So... how is the mail -c call in newuser supposed to work for normal
> (ie: not in group sys) users?

this is how the permissions were set up in 2005 on my machine:

; ls -ld /mail/box
d-rwxrwxrwx M 456741 upas upas 0 Jul 15  2009 /mail/box

- erik

Re: [9fans] Creating new mail users; mail -c

[roger peppe]

On 22 March 2010 13:37, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
>> So... how is the mail -c call in newuser supposed to work for normal
>> (ie: not in group sys) users?
>
> this is how the permissions were set up in 2005 on my machine:
>
> ; ls -ld /mail/box
> d-rwxrwxrwx M 456741 upas upas 0 Jul 15  2009 /mail/box

looks dangerous to me - won't that allow anyone to
rename mailboxes and intercept mail?

Re: [9fans] Creating new mail users; mail -c

[Francisco J Ballesteros]

It would help being able to "append" to a directory, i.e., being able to
create new files but not to, say, remove, already created files.

mail2fs has the same problem. I run it from a cron on my name, thus my folders
have 770 or 775 and not 777. But, if you want to run this, say, as
user none, you
need to open it up.

On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 3:50 PM, roger peppe <rogpeppe@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 22 March 2010 13:37, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
>>> So... how is the mail -c call in newuser supposed to work for normal
>>> (ie: not in group sys) users?
>>
>> this is how the permissions were set up in 2005 on my machine:
>>
>> ; ls -ld /mail/box
>> d-rwxrwxrwx M 456741 upas upas 0 Jul 15  2009 /mail/box
>
> looks dangerous to me - won't that allow anyone to
> rename mailboxes and intercept mail?
>
>

Re: [9fans] Creating new mail users; mail -c

[erik quanstrom]

On Mon Mar 22 16:22:15 EDT 2010, nemo@lsub.org wrote:
> It would help being able to "append" to a directory, i.e., being able to
> create new files but not to, say, remove, already created files.

i considered modifying the fileserver to do something similar
for nupas.  perhaps reusing the 'a' bit.  but in the end, i didn't
do it as we weren't having a problem.  i use the mode 773 for
mailboxes which can be delivered to by other users and 700
for mailboxes which can't be delivered to by other users.  denying
read access at least makes it annoying to guess all the mail files
in the mbox.

(thanks to anthony for a recent fix to splitmbox.)

russ had a specific objection to "append" directories.  i don't
recall how the argument went.

- erik

Re: [9fans] Creating new mail users; mail -c

[David Leimbach]

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On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 1:55 PM, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>wrote:

> On Mon Mar 22 16:22:15 EDT 2010, nemo@lsub.org wrote:
> > It would help being able to "append" to a directory, i.e., being able to
> > create new files but not to, say, remove, already created files.
>
> i considered modifying the fileserver to do something similar
> for nupas.  perhaps reusing the 'a' bit.  but in the end, i didn't
> do it as we weren't having a problem.  i use the mode 773 for
> mailboxes which can be delivered to by other users and 700
> for mailboxes which can't be delivered to by other users.  denying
> read access at least makes it annoying to guess all the mail files
> in the mbox.
>
> (thanks to anthony for a recent fix to splitmbox.)
>
> russ had a specific objection to "append" directories.  i don't
> recall how the argument went.
>

Is it because you can bind in new stuff to a directory if you need it?


>
> - erik
>
>

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Re: [9fans] Creating new mail users; mail -c

[erik quanstrom]

> > russ had a specific objection to "append" directories.  i don't
> > recall how the argument went.
> >
>
> Is it because you can bind in new stuff to a directory if you need it?

not really.  it was related to the problems with /tmp directories
in linux.

consider a standard unix-style mailbox.  if you make the file
append-only, but world writable (not world-readable), anyone
can append a message to your mailbox, but only you can rewrite
it or read it.

the thought is that it would be nice to have a similar capablity
with a directory, where the permission to remove is seperated from
the permission to create.

- erik