Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2001 23:18:33 -0600 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: Walter Hop <walter@binity.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: does /etc HAVE to be world readable? Message-ID: <15343.23465.798379.106042@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <57002037@toto.iv>
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Walter Hop <walter@binity.com> types: > QuickQuestion(tm): does /etc HAVE to be world readable? Of course not. In fact, about the only thing that has to exist to boot unix is the kernel and /bin/sh. The question is, what's going to break if you remove - or lock - the things in question. After a quick scan of /etc, assuming you're running the standard base system tools, you can expect: 1) Files will be listed by user/group numbers instead of names if programs can't read /etc/passwd. 2) Anything trying to reach something else on the net will break because it can't get to /etc/resolve.conf and /etc/services. 3) Daemons that don't run as root may fail because they can't read /etc/services, though that's probably rare. 4) Mail will break in any number of ways. X won't be startable by users. 5) Some man pages will become inaccessible. 6) User programs that print won't be able to tell what printers are available. There are probably others I missed. -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Q: How do you make the gods laugh? A: Tell them your plans. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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