Re: Problems with the permissions of the "index" file

[Yngve Svendsen]

At 15:01 15.06.2001 +0200, Raquel Toribio wrote:
> I have set up GNATS 3.113.1 and I am issuing problems from tkgnats 3.0.18.
> It usually works, but sometimes I receive a message from the gnats server
> telling me that it could not append the new problem report into the indes
> file.
> This is the message I receive:
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------------------------------
> From: RT (GNATS Management)
> To: gnats-admin
> Subject: problem with file-pr
>
>
> Can't append to the GNATS index file (/home/gnats/gnats-adm/index).
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------------------------------
>
> When this occurs, I check the permissions of this file and see that they
> are:
>
> -rw-r--r--    1 root     root         2242 Jun 15 11:58 index
>
>
> Changing these permissions to be -rw-rw-rw- the database starts working fine
> again.
> (since it is the user gnats the one that tries to update it).
> Nevertheless, after submitting a few new bug reports, I get the same error
> and I
> have to do the same as before.
> Does anybody know why could the file get the permissions changed?

Try setting the queue-pr program to suid gnats, i.e.
chown gnats /usr/local/libexec/gnats/queue-pr
chmod u+s /usr/local/libexec/gnats/queue-pr

We had this problem on one of our servers, and as far as I can remember, 
the procedure above fixed it. Be aware, however, that this is a potentially 
somewhat insecure solution.

Yngve Svendsen