Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rice!sun-spots-request
From: mrsvr!mrsvr.starr@uwm.edu (Larry Starr,Mezzanine,46971,5638828)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: Re: What are these directories used for?
Keywords: Miscellaneous
Message-ID: <9414@brazos.Rice.edu>
Date: 28 Jun 90 17:37:10 GMT
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Organization: Sun-Spots
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X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 241, message 4

From article <9336@brazos.Rice.edu>, by deckel@relay.nswc.navy.mil:
> We did a check on a few of our systems for all world-writable directories
> and the directories /etc/sm and /etc/sm.bak showed up.  What are these for
> and do they really have to be world-writable?

They are used by "rpc.statd" to store local status files.  To the best of
my knowledge the files are always stored with a size of zero and a name of
"remote host name".  They are used to reestablish locks "lockd(8)" across
crash and recovery.  I believe that the daemon(s) will create these
directories if they do not exist on startup, but that may depend on the
SunOS release you are running.

They are mentioned in the man page "man statd".

Hope this helps.

Larry Starr
MR Research Facility
G.E. Medical Systems