Re: [Exim] directory permissions

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Author: Philip Hazel
Date:  
To: Andy Wettstein
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [Exim] directory permissions
On Mon, 16 Aug 2004, Andy Wettstein wrote:

> So would it be possible to have chown called for the directory during
> delivery, too?


No. Deliveries run as individual users. Only root can obey chown().

> I know now that I can at least change the parent directory to get
> correct group permissions for shared email, but I would think that the
> expected behavior would be to set the group ownership based on the
> group option.


This does seem to depend on the OS and file system. On Solaris, for
example, it depends on the setgid bit on the directory. If that is set,
the file copies the group of the directory (and subdirectories also get
the setgid bit set). If setgid is not set, the file is created with the
current group.

I have just done an experiment on FreeBSD. The behaviour seems to be
always to copy the directory group, independent of the setgid bit.

This area seems sufficiently hairy that I have a gut feeling that Exim
should not be trying to mess around in here.

--
Philip Hazel            University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@???      Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
Get the Exim 4 book:    http://www.uit.co.uk/exim-book