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Puzzling permission issue

 
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# 1  
Old 11-16-2011
Puzzling permission issue
I have a file, the long listing output by 'ls -l' is
Code:
-rw-r--r--   1 usera  agroup     1246 Jul  7 14:44 temp.R

The file is under a Solaris ZFS file system. As a different user (userb), I did
Code:
cp temp.R /tmp
ls -l /tmp/temp.R
-rw-r--r--   1 userb  agroup     1246 Nov 16 14:45 /tmp/temp.R

The owner is changed. How can this happen?Smilie If I do a chown straight on the file, it will tell me that I'm not owner, chown fails. This is obviously a security hole, please help.


Moderator's Comments:
Mod Comment How to use code tags
Last edited by Franklin52; 11-17-2011 at 05:40 AM.. Reason: Code tags
# 2  
Old 11-16-2011
It is expected behavior. The file was written SOMEPLACE ELSE by you. Since anyone can read the file they can also copy it to another directory and become the owner. They just cannot mess with ownerhip of the original file at all. Only root or the owner can do that.
# 3  
Old 11-16-2011
Thank you for your quick reply. I was confused and forgot the actual issue is the following.
Code:
dqscs04:/home/jhzhang:64 % ls -l /etc/hosts
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 179 Jun 28 15:27 /etc/hosts
dqscs04:/home/jhzhang:62 % cp -p /etc/hosts .
cp: preserving permissions for `./hosts': Operation not permitted
dqscs04:/home/jhzhang:60 % ls -l hosts
-rw------- 1 root root 179 Jun 28 15:27 hosts

The current directory in the above procedure is my home direcotry and is a networked file system. If I copy the file to /tmp, which is a local file system, my user becomes the owner -- the normal situation. So the question is why the networked file system behave differently, and is the behavior normal?
Last edited by Franklin52; 11-17-2011 at 05:40 AM.. Reason: Code tags
# 4  
Old 11-16-2011
This is odd. NFS can enforce policies as to who's allowed to create what files with what permissions, but usually they'd want to prevent you making files as root -- not force them to be root. You shouldn't have permissions to do that unless you're root, for that matter.

What are the permissions of your home directory? ls -ld ~/

What happens when you cat /etc/hosts > ~/localfile instead?
Last edited by Corona688; 11-16-2011 at 07:13 PM..
# 5  
Old 11-17-2011
Code:
dqscs04:/home/jhzhang:67 % ls -ld ~/
drwxr-xr-x 107 jhzhang adusers 20480 Nov 16 17:14 /home/jhzhang/

dqscs04:/home/jhzhang:69 % cat /etc/hosts > ~/localfile
dqscs04:/home/jhzhang:70 % ls -l localfile
-rw-r--r-- 1 jhzhang adusers 179 Nov 17 09:17 localfile

My home directory is a netapp file system, type of Unix, should be equivalent to NFS.

Moderator's Comments:
Mod Comment Please use code tags!
# 6  
Old 11-17-2011
The fact your home directoy is 755 will not let you copy with -p option of cp, for you are not hte owner of the file... No issues just correct behaviour. Why would you use cp -p for anyway ? Were you hoping to modify the file and then copy back? ( Very silly...)
# 7  
Old 11-21-2011
The -p was used by the reporting user, the warning showed normal behavior, which is not part of my question.
 
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