Re: chmod/chown -R - maybe an ITP

[Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au>]

On Mon, 13 Dec 1999, Ben Collins wrote:
>On Mon, Dec 13, 1999 at 03:37:14PM +0100, Russell Coker wrote:
>> 
>> unlink("/home/user/.rhosts");
>> link("/etc/passwd", "/home/user/.rhosts");
>> sleep(60);
>> unlink("/home/user/.rhosts");
>> exit(0);
>> 
>
>Then you write a simple C program that opens with O_EXCL and then fchown's
>or fchgrp's the files. It's very simple.

According to the man pages O_EXCL only makes sense for creating files.

The solution is to write a program which does a readdir stat()'ing all the
files, when it finds one it thinks should be changed it does:
fd = open(filename);
if(fd > -1)
{
  fstat(fd, buf);
  // check contents of buf and log an error if we don't like them
  fchown(fd, owner group);
}

Not overly hard to do, but the sort of thing that should be done once and
done right, not done at every site.
I think that I could write a usable program performing the function of any
program in fileutils in 30 minutes or less.  However such programs wouldn't
be as functional as the fileutils ones, and I wouldn't want to write and
maintain them seperately for different sites.

-- 
The ultimate result is that some innovations that would truly benefit
consumers never occur for the sole reason that they do not coincide with
Microsoft's self-interest.
-- Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, U.S. District Judge