From: jshumate@wrdis01.af.mil (Shumate Jason)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.pyramid
Subject: Re: Weird problems with groups on Pyramid
Date: 10 Apr 92 17:22:05 GMT
Organization: 1926CCSG Robins AFB

In article <1992Apr10.002350.8709@pta.pyramid.com.au>, bob@pta.pyramid.com.au (Bob Vernon) writes:
> In article <1872@wrdis01.af.mil> jshumate@wrdis01.af.mil (Shumate Jason) writes:
> >I have been having some really weird problems with groups on Pyramid.  Let
> 
> So does everyone.  You are not alone.
> 
> >me explain.  I have a program that I want to run as setgid so that everyone
> >in the group can have the permissions belonging to the owner.  Let's
> >call my program "test" and say we have a group called "mygroup" that 
> >is in /etc/groups that contains Mary, Joe, Jason.  The directory "test" is
> >in has a permission of 777 all the way up the directory tree, so anyone
> >on the system can reach it.  The directory looks like this:
> >
> >-rwxr-s---   Joe   mygroup   2000 test*

[ deletions ]

> >                                 Well, on my box, Joe can execute test,
> >Jason can execute test, but Mary can't.  Absolute pathnames were used, and
> >the  C-shell command "groups" shows Mary as being in the group, yet she
> >can not execute test!
> 
> You didn't say what error message Mary gets, which would help a lot.

Thanks for repsonding.  The error message is "cannot execute".  Permission
is denied to user "Mary" although she is indeed in the group that owns
both the file and directory.  I should add that I received a suggestion to
try -rwsr-x--- on the program.  I tried this, but I still have the same
problem.

> So I'll just list all the problems with the above that you may having
> (from least likely to most likely).
> 
> 1.  Is the name of your program really test?  There is a standard unix

What a blunder on my part!  I was trying to be generic, and of course in
my posting I use a bad choice for a name.  Actually, the program is called
"ddss016a".  I don't know why I said "test".  Maybe something like "myprog"
would have been much better.

[ deletions ]

> 2.  Is test a shell script?  If Joe and Jason are in a different
> universe from Mary or use a different shell then it may be that a
> different shell program is used to execute the script.  This will cause
> differences in the way it executes.  You can usually force a script to

Well the program in question is a binary that is called from a shell
script.  The user can execute the shell script, but not the program
that is called from it.  The problem is the binary program.  I can log in
as the user and attempt to run the binary by bypassing the shell script and
I still get "permission denied".  The shell script is NOT setuid or setgrp,
by the way.  

[deletions]

> 4.  (This is the most likely).  Is Mary in the att universe?  If so
> then do not use the groups command, use the att id command.  (BTW,
> groups is not a C-shell command.  It is a ucb universe command
> regardless of the shell).  In the standard SysV environment, a user is

Thanks for the correction.  groups is indeed a UCB command.  No, user
Mary is in the UCB universe.  ALL of our users here are UCB users, no
exceptions.

[more deletions]

Thanks for attempting to answer my still baffling problem.  Any other ideas
are welcome.
-- 
CUL8R,                                | "... you're living in a world of make
Jason Shumate                         |  believe!  With flowers and bells and
System Administrator, wrdis02         |  leprechauns and magic frogs with
jshumate@logdis1.wr.aflc.af.mil       |  funny little hats." -  Homer Simpson
Newsgroups: comp.sys.pyramid