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Date:      Wed, 30 Oct 1996 10:18:50 -0600
From:      dubois@primate.wisc.edu (Paul DuBois)
To:        terry@lambert.org (Terry Lambert)
Cc:        current@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: /var/mail (was: re: Help, permission problems...)
Message-ID:  <199610301618.KAA17123@night.primate.wisc.edu>
In-Reply-To: <199610300043.RAA22382@phaeton.artisoft.com>; from Terry Lambert on Oct 29, 1996 17:43:51 -0700
References:  <MailManager.846631031.13515.mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU> <199610300043.RAA22382@phaeton.artisoft.com>

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Terry Lambert writes:
> It's not unreasonable for an application to expect fcntl() to work
> correctly locally, and over NFS (FreeBSD doesn't have the NFS client
> side, has the unintegrated patches for the NFS server side, and does
> work locally.  This is *without* the "bug" you note in the exclusive
> locking of read-only files.

It may be reasonable to expect fcntl() to work correctly, but it's
not necessarily true that you're going to *get* it.  Witness this
note in the RELEASE_NOTES file from the sendmail distribution:

        Revert to using flock() whenever possible -- there are just
                too many bugs in fcntl() locking, particularly over
                NFS, that cause sendmail to fail in perverse ways.

Also, perhaps I missed it in this discussion, but just what *is*
the security problem WRT having /var/mail set to 1777?

-- 
Paul DuBois
dubois@primate.wisc.edu
Home page: http://www.primate.wisc.edu/people/dubois
 Software: http://www.primate.wisc.edu/software



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