Paul Howarth wrote: > Sharon Kimble wrote: >> 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. > None at all. No files and no 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. > The last time that I logged in as root was when I installed FC3 and set myself up as the user which was 2004-11-10. Don't think that I left a 'root' terminal running. I tend to do something as root and then just exit the terminal. Its a puzzle, but thanks for the pointers. Sharon. -- 17:37:12 up 3 days, 3:22, 2 users, load average: 1.48, 1.45, 1.36 A taste of linux http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/efever/index.html efever http://www.efever.blogspot.com/ Fedora Core 3, KDE 3.3.2-1.2.3, OpenOffice 1.1.4 Registered Linux user 334501
