Re: access to /var/log/messages

["Eric G . Miller" <egm2@jps.net>]

On Fri, Sep 01, 2000 at 02:05:47PM -0500, William Jensen wrote:
> Greetings Debians,
> 
> I'd like to give access to the directory /var/log/messages to my user
> account so I can watch what messages are being displayed there.  I'd
> do this with tail -f /var/log/messages.  Problem is my user accnt has
> no permissions on that directory.  I could change the permissions on
> the directory itself but then any other user can look into that data
> and I'd rather not have that.  Therefore is it wise policy to add my
> user account to the 'root' group?  Would that solve the problem while
> maintaining system security?  Or is there a better way of achieving
> this?  And how would I go about adding myself to the root
> group...modify /etc/group?

Methinks,

$ adduser <your username> adm

will do the trick.  Not too sure if it doesn't give too much away.  Alot
of things seem to have read priveledges for the adm group
(/dev/xconsole, /var/log/messages, ...).  I guess this is the purpose of
this group.  Wouldn't add just anyone to it.

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