On 03/28/08 12:01, W B Hacker wrote:
> Jason Keltz wrote:
>> By default, appendfile will not deliver if the path name for the file is 
>> that of a symbolic link. Setting the allow_symlink option relaxes that 
>> constraint.  Is there any way that I can get middle ground by enabling 
>> "allow_symlink", but only allowing symlinks that are owned by say, 
>> root/exim?  I don't want a user to be able to delete my symlink of 
>> /var/mail/USER to /real/path/of/var/mail.
> 
> As it is the path - not the file at the end of it - you wish to deny 
> user modification of, I'm not sure what *n*x perms cannot already protect..

I don't mind if the user erases the file at the end of the path.  I just 
want /var/mail/USER to always point to a particular file.

> That said, I don't see what the advantage is of using a symlink in the 
> first place.
> 
> Userland need not have 'visibility' of the whole dirtree, let alone 
> perms to modify it - only the Maildir or Mbox at the end of it. The 
> POP/IMAP needs the whole shebang (as Exim does), but need not expose it 
> to the user.
> 
> That said, none of our shell accounts have mail, and all of our mail 
> accounts, paths, privs, and mailstore are 'virtual' - even the 
> postmaster@, so my practice may not fit your environment.

In our case, all of our machines have access to /var/mail via NFS for 
local mail applications that do not use imap/pop.  We will start to 
change this soon by small groups of users at a time.  However, in order 
to be able to do this, we would like to be able to place the mail of the 
"localized" users into a different directory on the mail server, and 
then symlink /var/mail/USER to say, /local/mail/USER ..  Now, the users 
can only get at their INBOX via imap, yet exim can still deliver to 
their inbox because its still writing to /var/mail.  Later once everyone 
has been moved, /var/mail will simply become /local/mail.  If there was 
an "allow_root_symlink" instead of just "allow_symlink", this would 
solve my problem.


Jason.


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