HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: plarkin@iphase.com (Patrick Larkin)
Subject: Sticky-Bits and Group IDs in DIRECTORIES?
Originator: plarkin@coolcat
Organization: Interphase Corporation - Dallas Texas
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 16:00:46 GMT



HELP!   I've found the weirdest thing.  On our Sequent, it has been noticed
that files in /tmp always belong to the group "sys" regardless of the user's
group membership.  Furthermore, the permissions are 'rwxrwxrwt' on /tmp directory.
The fact that the sticky bit is set has no effect on the group attached to the file.

First of all, what is the purpose/benefit of setting a sticky-bit on a DIRECTORY?!?!?

Secondly, why do all files created take on the group id of its parent directory and 
ignore the group id of the user?  (Below is a sample session:

    tomcat:plarkin [60]  id
    uid=1618(plarkin) gid=712(mis)
    tomcat:plarkin [61]  groups
    mis bcs informix 
    tomcat:plarkin [62]  touch test_file
    tomcat:plarkin [63]  ls -la
    total 4
       2 drwxr-xr-x   2 plarkin  nobody       512 Oct 13 11:08 ./
       2 drwxr-xr-x   6 plarkin  mis          512 Oct 13 10:58 ../
       0 -rw-r--r--   1 plarkin  nobody         0 Oct 13 11:08 test_file

Really confused....
-- 
 /~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\
|  Patrick H. Larkin, Jr.    _| ~-       Interphase Corp.         |
|   System Administrator     \,  _}       13800 Senlac            |
|    plarkin@iphase.com        \(         Dallas, TX 75234-8823   |
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: tdphette@mke.ab.com (Thad Phetteplace x4461)
Subject: Re: Teaching System Administration (was "Re: temparary superuser")
Organization: Allen-Bradley Co.
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 14:04:36 GMT

pjh@mccc.edu (Pete Holsberg) writes:
[ context deleted to alter meaning :-)  ]
: 
: Hmmm...a 386SX costs about $1500 and I'd need 20 or $30,000 to start the
: lab. That's pretty expensive for a free UNIX! ;-)

The neat thing about UNIX is its multi user.  You might be able to stretch
your dollar a bit by hanging dumb terminals off serial ports on the systems.
Better still, if you have an ethernet and a lab full of terminals you can
get by even cheaper with a terminal server.  Of course in an admin course
its harder to share resources (10 people trying to use dump/restore on the
same system?) but it is still something to consider.  I second the
recommendation for 386BSD.  I have it installed at home with a Wyse 50 
terminal connected to it and it works great. 

What we really need is some sort of CBT that walks people through a
simulation of different admin functions.  Hmmm, not a bad idea.  Not a
substitute for hands on experience but a new sys admin could get his/her
feet wet without crashing a production system.

--
Thad Phetteplace
Network Systems Analyst, Allen-Bradley Co.
Phone: (414)382-4461
Email: tdphette@mke.ab.com

The opinions expressed here are entirely my own and not that of my employer...
I am not a slob, I am simply doing an experiment in domestic entropy!
From: jerry@incc.com (Jerry Rocteur)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Date: 11 Oct 92 22:18:10 GMT
Organization: InCC.com Perwez Belgium


 Horror story,

 I sent one of my support guys to do an Oracle update in Madrid.

 As instructed he created a new user called esf and changed the files
 in /u/appl to owner esf, however in doing so he *must* have cocked up
 his find command, the command was:   

 find /u/appl -user appl -exec chown esf {} \;

 He rang me up to tell me there was a problem, I logged in via x25 and
 about 75% of files on system belonged to owner esf.

 VERY little worked on system.

 What a mess, it took me a while and I came up with a brain wave to
 fix it but it really screwed up the system.

 Moral: be *very* careful of find execs, get the syntax right!!!!
-- 
 __^__                                                              __^__
( ___ )------------------------------------------------------------( ___ )
 | / | Jerry Rocteur                       Email: jerry@InCC.COM    | \ |
 |___|  Independent Computer Consultants division DELDRA s.p.r.l.   |___|
(_____)------------------------------------------------------------(_____)
   ^                                                                  ^
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,alt.folklore.computers
From: kochmar@sei.cmu.edu (John Kochmar)
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Organization: The Software Engineering Institute
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 15:33:11 GMT


A long time ago, back when the Apollo 460 was around and I had just
graduated from college, I had the good fortune of being one of two
adminstrators in charge of making a cluster of 460's a part of our
environment.  One of the things I was tasked with was geting them onto
our network.

Well, I was young, I had the manuals, and a guy from Apollo tech
support was there to help.  How hard could it be, right?

Well, we got out the manuals, configured the system (relying heavily on
the defaults), and within 2 hours, we had that puppy on the network.
Life was good.

About 3 hours later, I get a phone call from a systems programmer /
developer from CMU campus (the SEI is a part of CMU, and we are on their
network.)  He told me that if I didn't take the &%@*ing Apollo off the
network, he was going to do hurtful things to me physically.  
Life was not so good.

As it turned out, in default mode, the Apollo answered every address
request it saw, even if it is not the machine the request was for.
Kind of a "hey, I'm not who you are looking for, but I'm out here in
case you decide you'd rather talk to me."  Apollo considered this a
feature, and they took advantage of it in their OS environment.

However, one of the earlier versions of a heavily network dependant OS
developed at CMU considered this a bug.  The OS would issue a request,
and expect only the machine it was looking for to answer it.  Of
course, it would assume that if it got an answer to its request, it
must be the machine it expected to talk to.  It didn't look at the
address of the answer it got, so if it wasn't the correct machine, most
of the time the OS would hang or panic.

The outcome?  Over about 3 hours time, more and more of campus was
talking to our little 460, which had just enough muscle to keep up with
the requests.  By the time campus figured out what was going on, we had
an Apollo merrily answering the network requests for hundreds of
machines (the ones that were still up, that is.)  This caused the part
of campus who used the new OS going to hell in a bucket, one very busy
Apollo 460, and one very warm ethernet.

Well, we turned off the Apollo, configured it not to chat to all of
campus before putting it back on the ethernet (this time, we did it
while talking with campus, making sure we didn't cause the same
problems we did the last time -- we didn't have a packet monitor at the
time), and campus changed their OS to look at the request response
before assuming it was the correct one.  I also learned to think very
carefully about default values before using them.

John
Manager, Systems and Tools admin
SEI Computing Facilities



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Kochmar		 | Estimated amount of glucose used by an adult human
kochmar@sei.cmu.edu	 | brain each day, expressed in M&Ms: 250
SEI Computing Facilities |			-Harper's Index, October 1989
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,comp.unix.ultrix,comp.sys.sgi,comp.unix.wizards
From: mt00@eurotherm.co.uk (Martin Tomes)
Subject: Re: DAT tape compatability (DEC <-> SGI)
Keywords: DAT, DEC, Ultrix, SGI, Indigo, IRIX
Organization: Eurotherm Limited
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 14:16:15 GMT

flint@cs.curtin.edu.au (Daniel Baldoni) writes:

>Recently, a friend of mine asked if we could provide a transfer service
>for her.  She had a couple of very large TIFF images (approx 16Mb each)

 ... lots deleted.


We had problems with DAT tapes on Interactive UNIX because the SCSI
block size was set differently on the two machines.  An mt -v -f /dev/whatever
showed one a 512 bytes and the other at 1024.  I used mt -f /dev/whatever -b 2
to set the 512 to 1024 and all was well.  This might be your problem.
-- 
Martin Tomes
Janet:    mtomes@uk.co.eurotherm
Internet: mtomes@eurotherm.co.uk
UUCP:     {uknet,uunet}!etherm!mtomes
Xref: sparky comp.unix.admin:5701 comp.unix.sys5.r3:56
From: peter@miller.cs.uwm.edu (Peter J Diaz de Leon)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,comp.unix.sys5.r3
Subject: Where to get Printer Filters?
Date: 16 Oct 92 13:59:41 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.89.9.13

I am in the process of setting up out ISC V3.01 Unix
system to use lpr and lpd. However, ISC does not come
with any printer filters for Postscript printers, or
Laser Jets or serial printers. Basicly ISC doesn't come
with any of the neccessary filters.Does anybody know where
I can get my hands on some filters?

Thanks
Peter
(peter@miller.cs.uwm.edu)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,alt.folklore.computers
From: mt00@eurotherm.co.uk (Martin Tomes)
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Organization: Eurotherm Limited
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 10:03:02 GMT

We had something really wierd happen one day.  I copied a file to
/usr/local on someone elses machine and all seemed to be OK.  A bit
later the user of the machine noticed that the files and directories they
were using on another disk partition were corrupted.  There were 2
gigbyte files on a 650Mb disk - and lots of them with wierd names and
permissions.  At first I did not connect the two events.  This disk
had given trouble when the power failed a week before, so I fsck'ed
it.  Now I have run fsck more times than I can begin to imagine and
seen plenty of errors, some needing 'manual intervention' but I had
never seen anything like this before!  It was spectacular.  And what
was more, when I ran it a second time things got worse.  Then I tried
to backup the /usr/local partition before restoring this corrupt data
and lo, that was corrupt too.  It turned out that our sysadmin had
created the /usr/local disk partition in the wrong place on the disk
and put it over the top of the alternate sectors partition.  By
writing to the /usr/local disk I had written all over the alts which
were mapped into the users partition.  Oh dear, what a mess.

Solution, rebuild all the partitions so they don't overlap and
restore, also buy the sysadmin a calculator.

Moral, always do your sums on the /etc/partitions file very carefully
before using mkpart.
-- 
Martin Tomes
Janet:    mtomes@uk.co.eurotherm
Internet: mtomes@eurotherm.co.uk
UUCP:     {uknet,uunet}!etherm!mtomes
From: robjohn@ocdis01.UUCP (Contractor Bob Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories
Date: 14 Oct 92 21:01:25 GMT
Organization: Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma

In article <1992Oct12.224512.8169@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz> russells@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Russell Street) writes:
>*Fortunately* I had just finished a backup and was now finding
>out the joys of tar and it's love of path names. [./etc/rc.local
>and /etc/rc.local and etc/rc.local) are *not* the same for tar
>and TK-50s take a *long* time search for non-existant files :(]

Which reminds me of my very **favorite** *nix error message...

    tar: 1 file(s) not restored

GRRRRRrrrrr.....
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: twpierce@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce)
Subject: Re: temparary superuser
Organization: Amherst College, Amherst MA
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 14:29:32 GMT

In article <1992Oct3.212147.10214@ra.msstate.edu> fwp@CC.MsState.Edu (Frank Peters) writes:

>In article <1992Oct2.230122.24463@RedBrick.COM> mmt@RedBrick.COM (Maxime Taksar) says:
>: 
>: A well set-up, well maintained system shouldn't have any problems
>: with casual experimentation.  If it *does*, then average users
        ^^^^^^                                      ^^^^^^^
>: shouldn't be allowed on it.
>
>No matter how much work I do to make my system secure I can never
>*know* that there are no more holes left.  In that environment users
>poking at my systems with the obvious intent of getting root access
                               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>attract my attention and find me to be less than friendly.

I don't believe you two are disagreeing on this topic.

-- 
____ Tim Pierce                / "You are just naive and repressed because
\  / twpierce@unix.amherst.edu /  penis envy is here and it's now and it's
 \/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) /  all around you." -- Neal C. Wickham
From: robjohn@ocdis01.UUCP (Contractor Bob Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: Limiting the use of specific commands
Date: 8 Oct 92 14:45:56 GMT
Organization: Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma

In article <1992Oct6.082417.1110@coulomb.pcc.oz.au> parson@coulomb.pcc.oz.au (Brenda Parsons - x2403) writes:
>We would like to be able to limit the usage of specific commands on the
>system, such as 'rn', 'Pnews', 'cc', 'make' etc

We create a group that contains the users who can access that program,
and change permissions to make the program only executable by members of
that group.  (If you're running an AT&T-type unix, the user will have to
do a newgrp to change groups before running it.)  Sort of a poor-man's
Access Control List (ACL).  For instance, when we restricted access to
ftp, we created a group called ftp in /etc/groups...

   ftp::51:user1,user2,etc

And changed access on /usr/ucb/ftp to...

   -rwx--x---  1 root     ftp        131072 May  4  1990 /usr/ucb/ftp*

Bob Johnson
Tinker AFB, Oklahoma
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,news.software.nntp
From: elitman@nxstep.com (Eric A. Litman)
Subject: NNTP via dialup link
Organization: NXSTEP Ventures
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 06:16:26 GMT

I have been commissioned with setting up a limited newsfeed for a site
with minimal available resources. What I would like to do is allow the
users at the site to open a dialup connection to an internet-connected
machine and emulate a real NNTP connection using perl scripts.

The concept is simple enough. A user will tip/cu (kermit drops carrier
when it is killed) into his/her account on the remote machine, kill
the tip process without dropping carrier, then run the preferred news
reader on the client machine. On this machine, in place of a local NNTP
server will be a perl script, registered in /etc/inetd.conf, which
will first send a command to run a similar script on the remote
machine, then simply copy all input to /dev/ttya (the outgoing serial
device on a NeXT.) The script on the remote machine will open the NNTP
connection to the server and pass back and forth the necessary
commands. Basic copy-in, copy-out procedure.

Assuming the client script is called pnntpd (pseudo-NNTP), the line in
/etc/inetd.conf on the client machine will read:

  nntp  stream  tcp  nowait  root  /usr/local/scripts/pnntpd pnntpd

Here's a simple diagram of what I need:

{newssrv}<-->[ server script ]<-->%phone%<-->[ client script ]<-->{client}

When the news reader opens the connection to the local NNTP server, it
will simply pass all of its data through both scripts to the real,
remote NNTP server. The client newsreader, Tin, will be configured so 
that it connects to 'localhost'.

I have something of a dysfunctional client script that is missing the
output command to the server machine to start the nntp session:

	 # taken from Steve_Hayman@next.com
	 open(TTYA, "+>/dev/ttya");
		  if ( fork() ) {
			# parent - copy stdin to ttya
				while ( <STDIN> ) {
						 print TTYA;
				}
			} else {
				# child - copy ttya to stdout
				while ( <TTYA> ) {
					 print;
				}
			}

This seems very straight-forward, but not knowing how to script in
perl I'm at a loss. What I need is a working script for the server
machine, and hopefully a nicer client script as well. Would it be
possible to have the script dial the modem, log into the remote
machine (through a Xylogics Annex box), and start the server script
without any interaction from the user? This would be *ideal*.

I truly appreciate any help you might have to offer. I will gladly
summarize to the group any responses I receive.

--
Eric A. Litman  #import <std/disclaimer.h> | NeXTMail, MIME accepted - please 
Federal Region, NeXT Campus Consultant     | indicate in Subject line.
From: JRowe@cen.ex.ac.uk (J.Rowe)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Date: 14 Oct 92 11:41:23 GMT
	<djd.718900643@reading> <2840@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>
	<rik.718977315@nella15.cc.monash.edu.au>
Organization: Computer Unit. - University of Exeter. UK

In article <rik.718977315@nella15.cc.monash.edu.au> rik@nella15.cc.monash.edu.au (Rik Harris) writes:


>         I said to myself (being a Friday afternoon...see previous
>   post) "it's only temporary.../mnt is already being used...I'll mount
>   it in /tmp".  So, I mounted on /tmp/a (or something).  This was fine
>   for a few hours, but then the auto-cleanup script kicked in, and blew
>   away half of my source (the stuff over 2 weeks old).  I didn't notice
>   this for a few days, though.  After I figured out what had happened,
>   and restored the files (we _do_ have a good backup strategy),
>   everything was OK.

If you're doing this using find always put -xdev in:

 find /tmp/ -xdev -fstype 4.2 -type f -atime +5 -exec rm {} \;

 This stops find from working its way down filesystems mounted under
/tmp/. If you're using, say, perl you have to stat . and .. and see if
they are mounted on the same device. The fstype 4.2 is pure paranoia.

Needless to say, I once forgot to do this. All was well for some weeks
until Convex's version of NQS decided to temporarily mount /mnt under
/tmp... Interestingly, only two people noticed. Yes, the chief op.
keeps good backups!

Other triumphs: I created a list of a user's files that hadn't been
accessed for three months and a perl script for him to delete them.
Of course, it had to be tested, I mislaid a quote from a print
statement... This did turn into a triumph, he only wanted a small
fraction of them back so we saved 20 MB.

I once deleted the only line from within an if.. then statement in
rc.local, the sun refused to come up, and it was surprisingly
difficult to come up single user with a writeable file system.

AIX is a whole system of nightmares strung together. If you stray
outside of the sort of setup IBM implicitly assume you have (all IBM
kit, no non IBM hosts on the network, etc.) you're liable to end up in
deep doodoo. 

One thing I would like all vendors to do (I know one or two do) is
to give root the option of logging in using another shell. Am I the
only one to have mangled a root shell?

John Rowe
Dept. Physics
Exeter University
UK.
From: sam@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (B. Samuel Blanchard)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Date: 12 Oct 92 19:33:14 GMT
Organization: Dept. of CS Ball State University Muncie IN

#1   I never actually verified it but I think I deleted some of my
     bosses files as a very novice sysadmin.  He found some things missing
     after I had a minor tangle with rm.  When he ask I said I had run into
     a problem and he smiled and let it go.  Sorry Raul!

#2   I had a boss continue to reboot a dying system in an attempt to print
     out material for his conference presentation.  He was not interested
     in waiting until I worked on the system; if he couldn't get it working,
     he assumed I couldn't.
        I quit :-(
        Then he quit  :-)
        Then I spent a weeking fixing the system.  :-0  <--words edited
        Some thing have improved there they tell me.
     Disclaimer: This is purely my interpretation and not intended to offend.
                 It was my pre-assumption that you didn't read this group.

#3   Recently had someone recover an old full backup over a running system.
     A manager 2 levels up noticed that our automatic backup, written by his
     staff, was failing far too often.  Even worse, it did not always report
     errors.  Since I was gone, he felt free to assign a manual backup to
     another group.  The guy doing the "backup" called a member of his group
     at 8pm, that person finally called me at some un-goddly hour in the
     morning (I was glad he called!).

     The best part was the end result.  We now do backups in our group.
     Don't you love how progress slaps you awake some times.
-- 
B. Sam Blanchard        sam@bsu-cs.bsu.edu
418 Winfield Dr         (317) 284-7131   work
Greenfield, IN 46140
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: sherwood@fenris.space.ualberta.ca (Sherwood Botsford)
Subject: Who's got files open on /dev/xxx
Organization: University Of Alberta, Edmonton Canada
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 00:52:56 GMT


A while back someone was looking for a tool to find what  
files were open on a device.

The answer came back: lsof seemed to be the recommended  
choice.

However lsof doesn't handle nfs files.  e.g.  I'm on a  
server; suddenly the disk goes snake.  I want to know what  
process is doing this.

Or;
	I'd like to unmount a partition.  I get a "device  
busy"  How do I find out who has a cwd on that partition?

Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: khsin@fai.com (Kirk Hsin)
Subject: Free Pass for Interop `92
Organization: Fujitsu America, Inc
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 00:55:00 GMT

Hi, 

OSSI have a less expensive, but top quality network management product, 
the NetWalker V1.2. NetWalker was designed according to the industrial
standard, SNMP MIB I, II and RMON MIB, and with several extensive 
features, such as network node discovery, Gawk UNIX script alarm 
builder, multi-medium alarm notification, etc.

In fact, we will have a booth at the Interop '92, 
Location is: 	Booth #5370, Mascone Center,San Francisco
Date:		10/28/92 to 10/30/92.

You are invited to attend our booth. We will have a real time network 
management demonstration for you. We will send you a free entry pass 
(worth 50.00).  

If you can not come to our booth please let me know your 
mailing address and phone number.  We will send you additional information,
or beta test, please answer the following questions:

Name:           _______________________________
Company Name :  _______________________________
Address      :  _______________________________
		_______________________________
Telephone    :  _______________________________
Job title    :  _______________________________
Network configuration: ________________________
GUI perference (OPENLOOK or MOTIF) ___________________________
Version of OS : 		______________________________
Version of hardware platform 	______________________________
Does your company has budget?   ______________________________

We are looking forward to meeting you in our booth.
Best Regards,

Kirk Hsin
Marketing Coordinator/Sr. Software Engineer
Fujitsu Open Systems Solutions, Inc.
Tel: (408)456 7128  (800)456 OSSI
FAX: (408)456 0960
Addr: 3055 Orchard Drive, San Jose, CA 95134-2022
Email: khsin@ossi.com uucp!uunet!ossi!khsin

 




Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: frank@krill.NoSubdomain.NoDomain (Frank Flesland)
Subject: RE: Admin/User Ratio
Organization: University of Bergen, Norway
Disclaimer: TIMOO
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 92 13:49:41 GMT

> I  am looking for statistics or ratios that correlate
> users to system administrators in a Unix based network.
>
> 10:1 20:1: 50:1 or such.
There are noe general sysadm/user ratio.

It all depends on what the users do, how experienced they are and so on.

One really helpless user can give you more work than 10 others..
Or a really active one.

Frank

BTW: TIMOO = This Is My Own Opinions..
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin