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Aucbvax.3156 fa.unix-wizards utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!unix-wizards Tue Sep 15 15:30:35 1981

>From decvax!utzoo!henry@Berkeley Tue Sep 15 15:24:25 1981 re /usr/spool/mail/root trick:

Writing on a setuid file does not shut off the setuid bits in a standard V7. Nor does chowning it. Neither change is hard, but it's not clear to me that it's worth being incompatible with the rest of the world, when the /usr/spool/mail/root problem really arises from another cause entirely. The real moral of the story is that setuid programs like mail should be careful about doing chowns. We have modified V7 mail (for other reasons entirely, actually) so that it does the chown only if the file did not exist before mail fopened it.

Henry Spencer ucbvax!decvax!utzoo!henry

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