mail forwarding fails

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi,

I have a .forward file for user sybase and then I try to mail then it says in mail.log.
Dec 21 21:17:39 ham10d sendmail[219974]: VAA0000215655: forward /sybase/sybmgr/.
forward: World writable directory

ls -l /sybase
drwxr-xr-x 20 sybase sybase 8192 Dec 21 19:35 sybmgr

ham10d /> ls -l /sybase/sybmgr/.forward
-rw------- 1 sybase sybase 71 Dec 20 18:28 /sybase/sybmgr/.forward

So why does it say world writable?

Thanks for any idea,

Michael

[Hein van den Heuvel]

Isn't it complaining about the directory, not the file.

Try: ls -ld /sybase/sybmgr
and: chmod 750 /sybase/sybmgr

Hint: Just Google for "World writable directory", as this (at first glance) does not appeat to be Tru64 specific.

hth,
Hein.

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hein

this is what I thought. But why is 755 world writable? I will have a look into the links I found at the google search.

thanks,

Michael

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hein,

I changed access to that dir and still the same error.

drwx------ 20 sybase sybase 8192 Dec 21 19:35 sybmgr

I still do not understand that.

thanks,

Michael
ps. the machine runs 5.1A pk6.

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi again,

I deleted .forward and it is still complaining. I tried the global /var/adm/forward/username
but that did not make any difference.
How do I get the version of sendmail?

thanks,

Michael

[Peter Leddy_1]

Hi Michael,

This should show you the version of sendmail that you are running.

sendmail -bs < /dev/null

HTH,

Peter

[Don Ritchey · Accepted solution]

Check all the directories between your home directory and the root. Any of those directories having group or world writable bits set in the permissions will result in this message. We had a system here where the /home directory was group writable and generated this error message.

Start at your home directory and run the command : 'ls -ld .'
If the permissions are such that only the owner of the directory has write permissions, then go the to parent directory and repeat the steps until you reach root (/). Any of these directories, including root, with group or world writeable permissions need to be set to more secure settings.

Best wishes on getting to a solution to the problem.

Don

[Johan Brusche]

Michael,

Is only mail from sap complaining ? In most cases this is caused by /var/adm/sendmail protection. The whole directory chain var, adm and sendmail should have 755 protection.

__ Johan.

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Don,
you were right. The /sybase was world writable. If that can be figured out why is the error message not more specific?
In man forward there seems to an inconsistency. At first it says
/var/adm/forward/username and then
/var/forward/username
Now what is it? I have tried both without result. Otherwise it works. Are there any good reasons for using the forward directory and what are the requirement concerning ownership and access?

Thanks for your time,

Michael

[Yong_7]

Hi Michael,

the actual direcoty path can be defined in sendmail.cf file, it's system-wide mail forwarding settting. good reasons for permission setting like that is you won't interested in allowing someone else to get your email by mucking it.

Cheers !

YJ