SUMMARY: chown not working

I received tons of responses to my originial post.  I had read the man pages
like 4 times, but for whatever reason, the paragraph about this issue didn't
register with me - my apologies for that.  Several mentioned that this is a
security item, but when I worked on - and even taught HP-UX - the chown
command would strip the special bits (SUID, SGID, Sticky) for this very
reason.  I *thought* Solaris worked the same way - at least up through 2.6,
but it has obviously changed and I didn't note it.

Thanks to the multitude of responses.

Ron

> All,
> 
> I have run into another very strange situation on all of my systems.  I
log
> on with my personal login id and in my home directory I "touch junk".
> Assume: my login id is rondin, userid is 30006, group is user, groupid is
> 100.
> 
> "ls -al junk" shows:
> -rwxr-xr-x  1 rondin user                 0 Sep  26  junk
> "ls -na junk" shows:
> -rwxr-xr-x  1 30006  100                 0 Sep  26  junk
> "ypcat passwd | grep rondin" shows
> rondin:jhfjhsjkfsjkh:30006:100:Ron D:/export/people/rondin:/bin/ksh
> "which chown" shows
> /usr/bin/chown
> "ls -la /usr/bin/chown" shows
> -r-xr-xr-x    1  root         bin           6884 Jan  5   2000
> /usr/bin/chown
> "ls -na /usr/bin/chown" shows
> -r-xr-xr-x    1  0              2            6884 Jan  5    2000
> /usr/bin/chown
> "ypcat passwd | grep root" shows
> root:;ladjfkljf:0:1:Super-User:/:/usr/bin/csh
> 
> Problem:
> as myself, "chown root junk" results in (I've also tried other userids
than
> root with the same result):
> chown: junk: Not owner
> 
> I can still use chown as root and change ownership of files, but not as a
> regular user.  I also had my admin partner try it using his regular user
> login and he experienced the same problem in his home directory.
> 
> Anyone have any ideas as to what's going on?  The file ownership id
matches
> my userid in the passwd file/map, but I can't chown a file.  I can create,
> edit, and even "rm junk" successfully.


Ron Dinwiddie
UNIX System Administrator
Temple Inland Forestry  Products Corp. (TIFPC) - Diboll
email: rdinwid@templeinland.com
Office: 936-829-1592   Fax: 936-829-6666
Pager: 936-630-7086



_______________________________________________
sunmanagers mailing list
sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org
http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagers