Subject: Re: static binaries

From: "Keith Smith" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 08:34:05 -5

On  7 Sep 96 at 21:53, Serge Bezzubov wrote:

>slightly modified the Makefile. After compilation succeeded I issued
>the ./ls -al command and it seems that it doesn't work properly. Look
>yourself at the output:
>
>-rw-r--r--  1 116          1491 Aug 15 15:56 .mailrc
>-rw-r--r--  1 116           135 Aug 29 21:58 .mailtool-init
>drwx------  3 116           512 Aug 29 21:36 .netscape
>-rwxr-xr-x  1 116          1391 Aug 29 21:58 .openwin-init
>
>As you can notice there is no group ownership at all and user
>ownership displays in numeric format. So, does anyone know what's
>wrong and how it can be corrected?

'ls' uses /etc/passwd and /etc/group to convert the numbers into
text.  If you were connected to your FTP site as a guest (or anon)
user then ls will be looking in ~ftp/etc for the files because FTPD
performs a chroot.  To get text in these fields, create an etc dir
and copy the passwd and group files (world readable) into it.

However, many sites do not do this (mine included).  Instead these 
sites leave the dir listings as they are.  This way a guest user can 
not find out the other user ID on your system.

Regards,
Keith.

------------
Keith Smith                                 [email-masked]
Paradigm Technology Limited                 Senior Software Engineer
PO Box 10-268                               +64 (4) 495-1000 (voice)
Wellington, New Zealand                     +64 (4) 405-1003 (fax)
             Finger [email-masked] for PGP key
                  [all required disclaimers apply]

---

From: Alain Magloire <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 12:13:55 -0400 (EDT)

> and copy the passwd and group files (world readable) into it.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

ahem, ... from a security point of view...

Keith probably means copy, but with some modifications
like removing the passwd entries if you don't use shadow

I usualy supply a minimum dummy ~ftp/etc/{passwd,group}
---passwd-----
god:*:0:1:The boss::
me:*:116:116:the other boss::
ftp:*:41:20:FTP::

what's in the field doen't really matter it's only to satisfy ls

> not find out the other user ID on your system.

agreed

--
bye, alain