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From: mwp@ubeaut.enet.dec.com (Michael Paddon)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: Re: Need help with mh *and* mail on RISC/Ultrix 4.1
Message-ID: <1991May20.010735.10221@ubeaut.enet.dec.com>
Date: 20 May 91 01:07:35 GMT
References: <8370@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>
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From article <8370@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>, by barrett@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Dan Barrett):
>>Whenever I try to perform a shell escape under vi as 
>>called from the "comp" command, it fails with the message
>>    "csh: Permission denied"
> 
> 	I have seen this behavior in several of our editors (JOVE, vi) when
> "comp" was not involved, so I do not believe that it is an MH problem.
> 
> 	The problem disappeared completely when I made /bin/sh my editor's
> default shell.  I believe that there is a bug in csh that causes this
> problem.

No. The problem is that the relevant MH commands are setgid to kmem
(presumably so they can look at /dev/kmem, god only knows why). It is
a feature of csh that it will barf if you try and run it with set[gu]id
without using the -b flag. This stops a well known security hole.

The fix is to either trash the setgid bits, or even better, get the latest
release of MH and use that instead.

					Michael

Disclaimer: My views may or may not be those of my employer.

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