topic .forward file in Operating System - HP-UX

.forward file

Tibi Baraboi_1 — Mon, 14 Oct 2002 10:54:57 GMT

Hi,
I try to forward emails ffom one inbox. I created the .forward. The owner of the file is the user who receives the messages but the forwarding process is not working properly. I n /var/adm/mailmsg log I have these recors:

Oct 14 13:49:37 wi000600 sendmail[1896]: NAA01884: forward /home/tbaraboi/.forward: World writable directory

Do you have any hints what is wrong?

Thank you,

Re: .forward file

harry d brown jr — Mon, 14 Oct 2002 10:57:07 GMT

What are the permissions on the directory /home/tbaraboi ??

The issue is that sendmail is checking security for you. Turn it off if you don't need it.

live free or die
harry

Re: .forward file

Christopher Caldwell — Mon, 14 Oct 2002 10:58:58 GMT

ll -d /home
ll -d /tbaroboi

one of the two (or both) will be world writeable. Sendmail doesn't consider this secure.

Remove the world writable perms from the offending directories.

Re: .forward file

Emmanuelle — Mon, 14 Oct 2002 10:59:54 GMT

hi,

Solution 1: Check the permissions on the ".forward" file. E.g. if the user
"mailman" has a ".forward" file in /home/mailman this user should
have the following permissions on the ".forward" file:

# ll -a /home/mailman/.forward

-rw------- 1 mailman users 20 Aug 4 1999 /home/mailman/.forward

Solution 2: Make sure the owner of the ".forward" file has the valid shell from
/etc/passwd listed in the /etc/shells file. E.g.:

# more /etc/passwd | grep mailman

mailmail:XcsSHS:126:20:TheMailMan,Sendmail
Group,:/home/mailman:/usr/bin/ksh

# vi /etc/shells
/usr/bin/ksh
:wq!

Now Sendmail can run programs or write to files using .forward file

Re: .forward file

Tibi Baraboi_1 — Mon, 14 Oct 2002 11:12:45 GMT

Thank you. The problem was related to permission for the /home ...I modified them to 755 and is working now.

Best Regards,
Tibi

Re: .forward file

Bill Hassell — Mon, 14 Oct 2002 19:13:25 GMT

Just as a note to everyone: newer versions of sendmail are paranoid about file and directory permissions (as well they should be). It's not just the file permission but *every* level of directory leading to the file. So, the file and the parent might be OK but the parent's parent was world writable. In Unix, *NOTHING* is safe from any user if any directory is world writable. A world writable directory means that renames (ie, mv) of the contents of that directory can be done by anyone.

sendmail is being kind m=by pointing out this deficiency.