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From: marz@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (martin.zam)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.att,comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: ps fails
Summary: Easy fix ...
Message-ID: <1991Feb20.215003.9458@cbfsb.att.com>
Date: 20 Feb 91 21:50:03 GMT
References: <1991Feb8.182949.22238@mccc.edu>
Sender: news@cbfsb.att.com
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 35

>AT&T 6386/33 running SV/386 R3.2.2
>
>When a user invokes ps, the system responds:
>
>ps: unlink() failed
>ps: /etc/ps_date, Permission denied
>ps: Please notify your System Administrator.
>
>/etc/ps_data is 644.  What gives?
>
>Thanks,
>Pete
>-- 
>Prof. Peter J. Holsberg      Mercer County Community College
>Voice: 609-586-4800          Engineering Technology, Computers and Math
>UUCP:...!princeton!mccc!pjh  1200 Old Trenton Road, Trenton, NJ 08690
>Internet: pjh@mccc.edu	     Trenton Computer Festival -- 4/20-21/91
>

Peter,
	The directory "/etc" should be group writable, with the group 
"usually" being sys.  If you check the permissions on "/bin/ps" you'll
see that this program is set-group-id and group owned by sys.  For
"ps" to work properly, the program needs to be allowed to modify the 
"/etc" directory.

$ ls -l /bin/ps
-r-xr-sr-x   1 bin      sys        38912 Sep  5  1989 /bin/ps
$     ^
      |
set-group-id bit set.

						Hope this helps,
						Martin Zam
						(201)564-2554