UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

sm860 IS the owner of the files below,but yet sm860 cannot change the ownership to bpt3a1.Please let me know why ?

See below for details
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sm860@unixs741_DEV:/usr/gdp/home/ftp/bpt3a1/incoming/ahdb/T5/pcasav/daily $ ls -l pcasav*
-rw-r--r-- 1 sm860 gdpintegrators 821 Sep 21 16:15 pcasavdaily.dat
-rw-r--r-- 1 sm860 gdpintegrators 39 Sep 21 16:15 pcasavdaily.end
sm860@unixs741_DEV:/usr/gdp/home/ftp/bpt3a1/incoming/ahdb/T5/pcasav/daily $ whoami
sm860
sm860@unixs741_DEV:/usr/gdp/home/ftp/bpt3a1/incoming/ahdb/T5/pcasav/daily $ chown bpt3a1 pcasav*
chown: pcasavdaily.dat: Not owner
chown: pcasavdaily.end: Not owner
sm860@unixs741_DEV:/usr/gdp/home/ftp/bpt3a1/incoming/ahdb/T5/pcasav/daily $

thx
m

what are the permissions on the parent directory? I believe commands like "chown" update the directory inode.

Also, acl's could be used, what O/S? or File-system are you using

Because it would be a security violation for the userID, sm860, to change the ownership of a file to another user, like bpt3a1.

makes sense.I guess it is a secutity violation.


sm860 was able to change permission so that bpt3a1 could mv and read the file.


Thanks again for all the replies

Note for those interested, the folder rights in which the files were sitting had drwx for all.

thx
m

Thanks for the update.

Yes, if terrible_person owned a file with very nasty stuff, for example. It would be a security violation for terrible_person to change the ownership of their file to innocent_victim.

There are other reasons as well, this is just one example.

My crazy mind would write a setuid program and then change the ownership to root and will be able to run it as root user than me

It would be a serious security violation if it did work.

Kaps

There is no Unix-like OS that I know of that would permit a file with setuid set to change the owner to root from a non-privileged user.

These are basic security controls that have been in place for as long as I can remember.