Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!gorodish!guy
From: guy@gorodish.Sun.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: NFS security
Keywords: NFS, mknod
Message-ID: <66897@sun.uucp>
Date: 5 Sep 88 22:46:10 GMT
References: <126@leibniz.UUCP> <670028@hpclscu.HP.COM> <1394@basser.oz> <1202@luth.luth.se>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Lines: 26

> On all SunOS that I have access to (3.2, 3.5, 4.0) I got this when I try.
> 
> mknod: must be super-user
> 
> So it is a NFS problem.

The only line of reasoning that I can see to get from the premise "this happens
on all versions of SunOS that I've tried it on" to the conclusion "it must be
an NFS problem" is "Sun invented NFS, so if it happens on all versions of SunOS
it must be an NFS problem".  However, this is one of the silliest lines of
reasoning I have ever had the misfortune to encounter, so obviously it wasn't
the line of reasoning being used here.

Any other line of reasoning, however, is likely to be equally silly, since the
reason the "mknod" command prints that message is that it contains the lines

	if(getuid()) {
		fprintf(stderr, "mknod: must be super-user\n");
		exit(2);
	}

which certainly have nothing whatsoever to do with NFS.  In fact, those lines
came from the System V "mknod", and were added when named pipes were added to
SunOS, because we picked up the S5R2 "mknod" command as part of the changes to
add named pipes.  They are, in fact, in the S5"R1" "mknod", which antedates NFS
by several years, so they clearly have nothing whatsoever to do with NFS.