Re: Bug#470994: mail_spool default mode is 0660
Josip Rodin <joy@debbugs.entuzijast.net> writes:
> Okay, given that I see no rationale for the sentence "Mailboxes must be
> writable by group mail.", I'm reassigning this to debian-policy.
>
> There is an ancient bug #24772 that was closed without a proper
> justification (it appears to have been rejected because it was in limbo
> with regard to the policy process).
I don't know what the original Debian rationale was, but the traditional
UNIX rationale for group-writable user mail spools is so that you don't
have to run your mail system as root and can instead run it as some other
user in group mail.
However, everyone seems to have given up on that or at least uses a
setuid-root MDA, so I'm not sure it's serving any real purpose at this
point.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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