Furnish, Trever G wrote:

>Because chown is only allowed to be run by root?  Contrast with systems like
>hpux where there's a "system privilege" that allows everyone to chown files.
>Normally the ability to chown files would be a security risk - otherwise
>what's to stop you from setting the suid bit on a file, then chowning it to
>root and running it, thereby elevating your permissions?  Actually, on hpux,
>chown will strip sticky bits when you give a file away, preventing such an
>exploit.
>
>I may be entirely wrong (and happily corrected) though, since I would've
>sworn it actually said chown was only for root in the manual page, but the
>manual page I have for it now doesn't say that.
>
>  
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Maria Comploier [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>>Sent: Wednesday, September 18, 2002 2:46 PM
>>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>Subject: chown: changing ownership of `/tmp/tst': Operation not
>>permitted
>>
>>
>>Why would chown only runs successfully if run as the root userid?
>>



  Being able to chown as a uid other than root would be a security risk. 
 Also it would make user quotas useless.





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