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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!harpo!decvax!decwrl!sun!idi!oliven!oliveb!jerry
From: jerry@oliveb.UUCP (Jerry Aguirre)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: simulatneous updates to history (?bug)
Message-ID: <533@oliveb.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 30-Jul-85 21:00:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: oliveb.533
Posted: Tue Jul 30 21:00:23 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Aug-85 07:34:22 EDT
References: <1818@amdahl.UUCP> <2829@seismo.UUCP>
Organization: Olivetti ATC; Cupertino, Ca
Lines: 26

> Currently if inews/rnews is running when expirs is running you MAY
> loose some articles from the history file.
> 
> Here is the shell script I  run from crontab to do the expiring. It works.
  
> chmod 4755 /usr/bin/rnews
> /etc/chown news /usr/bin/rnews

On many Unix systems this sequence will not work correctly because doing
a chown will remove the set uid and gid bits from the permissions.  I
suggest that you do the chown first and then the chmod.

Of course on many Unix systems the suid will not work for shell scripts
anyway.  I just tested it on my 4.1BSD system and it doesn't.  However
if the file begins with a line of:

	#!/bin/sh

then the setuid does work.  I guess this is another advantage to the
use of the #! strategy for controlling script execution.

I suspect that the posters /usr/spool/news directory is writable without
benefit of the suid.

				Jerry Aguirre @ Olivetti ATC
{hplabs|fortune|idi|ihnp4|tolerant|allegra|tymix}!oliveb!jerry