What is /etc/freeze

[Donald Kok]

Hi,
I am ecouraged to use /etc/freeze on some files. I do have /etc/freeze on my systems, but there is not a man page for it. The forum doesnot have info either. Does anybody know what freeze does? Is it superseded by another prog?
Thanks

[Chris Wilshaw · Accepted solution]

If memory serves, I think that this was an old utility connected to sendmail (there used to be a file created /etc/mail/sendmail.fc, which was the frozen version of sendmail.cf).

I've never seen it used for any other purpose, and I think that even this limited use died out after hp-ux 9.*

[Ollie R]

Hi Donald,

I found this link :

http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~mac/manuals/hpux-manual-pages/hpux/usr/man/man1m/freeze.1m.html

Basically, it freezes the sendmail configuration file on a cluster.

Hope this helps,


Ollie.

[Chris Wilshaw]

And here's the confirmation from the forums.

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x983ceea29889d611abdb0090277a778c,00.html

[Donald Kok]

I received the suggestion you could freeze a file, so you can later check if a file is tampered with. Now I know it is not.
Thanks

[Ollie R]

Hi Donald,

If you know a specific set of files that you need to keep tabs on then maybe you can use one or more of the following:
* the file modification time (though this can be faked using "touch")
* the file size (once again could be faked using padded spaces, etc.)
* the file checksum (see "man cksum" - this cannot be faked!!!)

This should give an indication of whether a file has been tampered with.

Ollie.

[Marc Dijkstra]

Hi there,

Under HP-UX 11.04 (The virtual vault OS) there is the added TCB functionality of the mkfcdb, setfiles and integrity programs. This is linked to the trusted system and allows you to catalog what the permissions, owner group etc. of files is and check if they change.

I am not sure if this is available on standard HP-UX with C2 trusted system, worth a look though....

MND