Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!romp!auschs!awdprime!sandino.austin.ibm.com!jeffe
From: jeffe@sandino.austin.ibm.com (Peter Jeffe 512.823.4091)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.aix
Subject: Re: chown broken in 3.1 ?
Message-ID: <3409@awdprime.UUCP>
Date: 6 Sep 90 17:31:05 GMT
References: <384@morpho.UUCP>
Sender: news@awdprime.UUCP
Distribution: na
Organization: IBM AWD, Austin, TX
Lines: 20

In article <384@morpho.UUCP> larry@morpho.UUCP (Larry Morris) writes:
>The chown() call now requires that co have root permissions in order to
>perform the chown.  In my case, although co "owns" the file the chown() 
>returns EPERM (obvious, but not listed in the man pages).  As usual IBM
>says tough, it works as documented.  Who cares if it acts like unix?
>
>I can see where this might fix some serious security holes inherent with
>remote file systems, but does the rest of the world do this?  Or is this
>another one of IBM's better ideas?

Well, BSD systems work this way, but I believe SysV doesn't.  The idea is
that it prevents users from evading quotas by "giving away" their files.
And yes, IBM changed the behavior of chown() in AIX3 to make it act like
*BSD* (and POSIX) Unix.  Believe me, it caused problems for us as well, but
we'll both have to live with it, as applications on BSDish systems do.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Jeffe   ...uunet!cs.utexas.edu!ibmaus!auschs!sandino.austin.ibm.com!jeffe
        first they want a disclaimer, then they make you pee in a jar,
                   then they come for you in the night