>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mon Jul 21 19:01 EDT 1997
>Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 16:01:25 -0700 (PDT)
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Re: general/722: SymLinksIfOwnerMatch and root-owned links
>
>Synopsis: SymLinksIfOwnerMatch and root-owned links
>
>State-Changed-From-To: open-closed
>State-Changed-By: brian
>State-Changed-When: Mon Jul 21 16:01:24 PDT 1997
>State-Changed-Why:
>Thanks for your suggestion. There is a great hesitancy on
>the part of the group to implementing extra features like
>this to work around glaring bugs in operating system
>software, particularly software in "userland". We feel
>that a better solution to this problem is, say, a perl
>script which "fixes" that problem right after a restore,
>rather than implementing it into Apache. Since the user
>probably has write access to the directory the symlink is
>sitting in, they can remove it and make a new link anyways.
>
>Thanks!
I understand that is can be considered a userland OS bug.
The problem is that the "bug" exists - and that nothing else on the system
cares about it (since slinks are always mode 777, the owner doesn't
matter) so nothing else considers it a bug.
[Do you know for sure that it is only Solaris that exhibits this behaviour?]
Yes - users can usually just fix the problem by removing and recreating the
link (if they have write permission in the directory, which they don't
always have). However the big issue is that they might not notice the
problem until someone happens to try that particular URL, and then
complains.
And, as sysadmin, having to go through (with perl or whatever) and change
all link ownerships after every restore, solely for Apache, is quite a bit
of extra maintanence work.
So, I will continue to solve the problem here by simply patching the Apache
source code. I guess that that's, as always, the huge advantage of running
a system/program for which source is available.
Thanks for your time.
Davin.
--
Davin Milun Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fax: (716) 645-3464
WWW: http://www.cs.buffalo.edu/~milun/
