Cannot open /etc/mail/local-host-names

Hans-Joachim Zierke

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Jan 5, 2011, 4:55:04 PM1/5/11

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Starting sendmail gives me

|Starting Mail Transport Agent (MTA): sendmail/etc/mail/submit.cf: line 91:
|fileclass: cannot open '/etc/mail/local-host-names': World writable
|directory

Emmh ... excuse me?

What is "world-writable" about
-rw-r--r-- 1 root smmsp 72 3. Jun 2009 local-host-names

?

Ciao
Hans-Joachim

J.O. Aho

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Jan 5, 2011, 5:46:46 PM1/5/11

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and what does 'ls -ld /etc/mail' give?

--

//Aho

Hans-Joachim Zierke

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Jan 5, 2011, 5:51:12 PM1/5/11

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J.O. Aho schrieb:

> and what does 'ls -ld /etc/mail' give?

drwxr-sr-x 7 smmta smmsp 4096 5. Jan 20:31 /etc/mail

Ciao
Hans-Joachim

Mark Hansen

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Jan 5, 2011, 7:23:53 PM1/5/11

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ehmmm, and what about /etc, then /

The check goes up to the root, since if any of those are compromised,
someone could replace everything from there down.

D. Stussy

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Jan 5, 2011, 5:46:17 PM1/5/11

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"Hans-Joachim Zierke" <Usenet...@Zierke.com> wrote in message
news:slrnii9q5n.3il...@Odysseus.Zierke.com...

> Starting sendmail gives me
>
> |Starting Mail Transport Agent (MTA): sendmail/etc/mail/submit.cf: line
91:
> |fileclass: cannot open '/etc/mail/local-host-names': World writable
> |directory

^^^^^^^

> Emmh ... excuse me?
>
> What is "world-writable" about
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root smmsp 72 3. Jun 2009 local-host-names

and "/etc/mail/"?

The message says DIRECTORY, not file.

Hans-Joachim Zierke

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Jan 5, 2011, 10:19:06 PM1/5/11

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Mark Hansen schrieb:

>>> and what does 'ls -ld /etc/mail' give?
>>
>> drwxr-sr-x 7 smmta smmsp 4096 5. Jan 20:31 /etc/mail

> ehmmm, and what about /etc, then /

I had checked /etc, but forgot about /, which was the culprit.

I received annoying mail from Mr./Mrs. smartd about some error count on
the harddrive containing the OS, which I keep separate from /home. I had
set aside a partition with a safety copy of the OS, which I now hurried
into operation.
Apparently, I must have made an error while creating that safety copy
many months ago. All other permissions but those of / seem to be okay.

Thanks
Hans-Joachim

--
Stop whining, enjoy winterwonderland!
http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/6122/dsc08074.jpg

David F. Skoll

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Jan 5, 2011, 10:31:32 PM1/5/11

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Hans-Joachim Zierke wrote:

> I had checked /etc, but forgot about /, which was the culprit.

My very first diagnostic when receiving a complaint from Sendmail
about /some/path/to/file is to run:

ls -ld /some/path/to/file /some/path/to /some/path /some /

It's a reflex now. :)

Regards,

David.

Robert Bonomi

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Jan 12, 2011, 7:03:26 PM1/12/11

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In article <slrnii9q5n.3il...@Odysseus.Zierke.com>,

> ?

"reading counts." <grin>

Did it say "world-readable _file_", as you've shown, or something else?

what does 'ls -l / /etc /etc/mail' show?

Mark Hansen

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Jan 12, 2011, 7:24:14 PM1/12/11

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Actually, his error said "World writable directory" (it's still shown above).

As it turned out, his "/" directory was world writable, which he reported
in another post on this thread.

ytechn...@gmail.com

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Jul 11, 2012, 7:05:43 AM7/11/12

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su
chmod go-w /
chmod go-w /etc
chmod go-w /etc/mail
service sendmail restart
exit

Sendmail is strict on the permissions.

Try the above and it should help.

cheers