Re: access to /var/log/messages

[John Galt <galt@inconnu.isu.edu>]

Have you considered uncommenting the "log to ttyv" line in syslog.conf,
then you don't need to play around with perms?  If you MUST elevate user
privs, try "sudo" first rather than making your user GID 0--you can gain
all the functionality you need, but don't open yourself to another
compromisable "800 pound gorilla account".


On Fri, 1 Sep 2000, 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?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Bill
> 
> 
> 

-- 
There is an old saying that if a million monkeys typed on a million 
keyboards for a million years, eventually all the works of Shakespeare
would be produced.   Now, thanks to Usenet, we know this is not true.

Who is John Galt?  galt@inconnu.isu.edu, that's who!