Re: Followup: access to /var/log/messages

[Andrew Sullivan <sullivana@bpl.on.ca>]

On Fri, Sep 01, 2000 at 02:49:05PM -0500, William Jensen wrote:

> I used adduser <username> adm and it worked like a charm.  My question is why
> does it work?  The folder /var/log is owned by root and has root group.  Why
> does adm have rights to that...how does that all fit together?

If you do 
	$ls -l /var/

You'll see (among other things)

drwxr-xr-x   16 root     root         4096 Sep  1 07:59 log

So, /var/log/ is a directory, user root can read, write, and execute
everything in it, and group root and all others on the system can
read and execute everything in it.  _But_

	$ls -l /var/log/messages

gets you

-rw-r-----    1 root     adm         78711 Sep  1 15:52 /var/log/messages

which tells you that user root can read and write to this file, and
anyone in the group adm can _read_ the file.  No-one else can read
it, either.

A
-- 
Andrew Sullivan                                      Computer Services
<sullivana@bpl.on.ca>                        Burlington Public Library
+1 905 639 3611 x158                                   2331 New Street
                                   Burlington, Ontario, Canada L7R 1J4