.forward file

[Tibi Baraboi_1]

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,

[harry d brown jr · Accepted solution]

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

[Christopher Caldwell]

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.

[Emmanuelle]

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

[Tibi Baraboi_1]

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

Best Regards,
Tibi

[Bill Hassell]

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.