Is it possible to find out how/when/who deleted particular dierectory on UNIX Aix3


 
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# 1  
Old 05-12-2004
Error Is it possible to find out how/when/who deleted particular dierectory on UNIX Aix3

Hi..
I am new to unix. And I am trying to learn more about admin part of it. We have come across a situation where one of the directory gets deleted everyday at 4:00 pm by some process. We are unable to find out what deletes that directory, seems like a automated job.. but there is nothing scheduled in crontab..
IS there any administrative command to find out the details.

Thanks
DM
# 2  
Old 05-12-2004
you can always check the cronjobs for whom ever has permissions to delete the dir.

Last edited by Optimus_P; 05-12-2004 at 07:00 PM..
# 3  
Old 05-12-2004
cron is a good start, but there could be other scheduling programs such as Autosys and Control-M that can do the same...find out what scheduling programs are running.
# 4  
Old 05-12-2004
Yow! First of all, you can do "ps -fu <uid>" to get a list of process for a certain user. But even with that revision, I would certainly not run that script. Especially for root. I don't know AIX, but there are processes like swapper and init that are special. I wouldn't try a ptrace() on them without a lot of research.

Can you briefly unplug the system from the network? If the directory disappears while the box is unplugged from the network, you know that it's a local process. If the directory is exported via NFS or a similiar service the local box may be invoking a rmdir() or unlink(). Even without NFS, a cronjob on another system could use a remote shell. Unplugging the system for a a few carefully timed seconds will tell you if another box is involved.

Deleting a directory requires write permission to the parent directory. By varying the permissions on that parent, you should be able to nail down the uid involved.

I would do a "ps -fu <uid>" in a loop around 4:00, sending the results to a file. Then I would study the file looking for any commands that could delete the directory.


Most directories are deleted by program like rm or rmdir. Or maybe perl. For that to happen, the program must run. To run a program, you must read it. This updates atime in the inode. Run "ls -lu /usr/bin/rm" at 3:59 and 4:01. If the time doesn't change, that was not the program used.

With a little detective work, you can usually zero in on the culprit.
# 5  
Old 05-13-2004
About ptrace... I have seen quite a few bugs in unix kernels. Most of the bugs seem unreasonable. And ptrace in particular seems to not get the kind of testing that a fork or an exec does.

I think that you want the rm or rmdir to actually work. If just should log as well. Remember other stuff is going on too.
# 6  
Old 05-13-2004
hehe change the permissions to 000 It wont be able to remove what it cant find.

What about your cron log? mine is under /var/adm/cron/log


Also, if you ahve a .rhosts file... i would remove all entries that are not absolutely necessary...


Also, if you use /etc/hosts.allow. I might institute tcp wrappers to restrict tcp to only valid users.
# 7  
Old 05-14-2004
You can also look at the 'at' jobs or the output from the 'last' comand. 'last' should show you if any one is interactively logged in at the time or running rsh or recex type stuff from another box. Given it is on a regular schedule I would assume it is a scheduler of some sort, but that doesn't mean the scheduler or the script is resident on the computer it is effecting. Like someone else mentioned, if you can unplug it from the net, it will greatly reduce the suspects.
 
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