Paul Howarth wrote:What you should be worried about is how your system got into this state in the first place. Any ideas on how someone running as root could change the permissions of the root directory so that any regular user could create, delete and rename files there? For instance, on your system a regular user could run the command "mv /lib /trash" and completely break your system in a way that would be quite difficult to recover from.
Thanks, this sorted it, and I've got sendmail working again.
Regarding the other problem - the last sendmail message was at 0500 on Sunday last ..... so its something that happened (or I did) between then and now. I'm currently investigating.
A couple of possibilities:
1. See if there are any files/directories owned by a non-root user in the root directory. That might provide a clue if there are any such files/directories.
2. Are you in the habit of logging in as root or leaving a terminal window with a root shell running? If so, you might have inadvertently typed a chmod command or run a script in the wrong directory, as root, by mistake. This is why people regularly recommend only switching to root when you really need to run a command as root, and then switch back.
Paul.
