Certain Users cannot write to /var/tmp

[Steven Sobkowski]

Any help on this would be appreciated:
I have an 11.X System in an NIS environment. The permissions on /var/tmp are correct bin:bin 777 (no sticky bit, even though there should be). There are a number of users that cannot create a file under /var/tmp. Most of the users can and I have been unable to locate any common theme among the users that cannot write to /var/tmp, they simply get a "cannot create" error. Can anyone think of a reason for this to occur?? Of course, there is plenty of space available under /var/tmp.
Thanks for any feedback,
Steven Sobkowski

[Mark Greene_1]

what is the ownership and permissions on /var? they have to be able to navigate the entire directory path.

HTH
mark

[Steven Sobkowski]

/var is also bin:bin and 777, so that looks okay too.

[Mark Greene_1]

are they having problems with just certain file names or creating any file? it may be that the file they are looking to create is a common file to the application, and may already exist with limited ownership/permissions which is what is restricting their access.

mark

[A. Clay Stephenson]

I would check the permissions of the /var mountpoint or /var/tmp if /var/tmp is a separate filesystem. You must unmount the filesystem to check this but this could very easily be your problem.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Thought number two: Are ACL's in play?

[Steven Sobkowski]

Good Question about the ACL's. Unfortunately I am ACL illiterate (and I inherited this machine unwillingly of course). There is a good chance that they are in place, I will start looking at how to find that out, unless someone posts a message and tells me how.

Thanks,
Steve.

[Mark Greene_1]

check the man pages for acl and lsacl

mark

[Steven Sobkowski]

It doesn't appear ACLs are in play here :(. Also in response to an earlier question, the users having the problem cannot create any file under /var/tmp .. regardless of the name.

Thanks ...
Steve.

[MANOJ SRIVASTAVA]

Hi Steven


If the user is trying to create a file which is already there then also u will get this error , may be you can delete all files for that application and restart the same to know if that is not the case.

Just a thought

Manoj Srivastava

[A. Clay Stephenson]

If this is a vxfs filesystem(which it probably is) then lsacl won't work - that's for hfs filesystems only. getacl /var/tmp will display the ACL's. Man getacl for details.

I would have these same users try to write to another filesystem. If that works then I would definitely look at the mountpoint permissions.

[Steven Sobkowski]

Thanks for all the inputs. I notices that /var was mounted with the quota option. Although there were no quoto's specified for the users having the problems, it turned out that by doing a quotacheck -F vxfs /var mysteriously corrected the problem.

Thanks again ..
Steve.