Permission Problem

[Jim Cunning]

On 08/10/2014 05:14 PM, Bill vance wrote:
> On 8/10/14, A.J. Bonnema <gbonnema at xs4all.nl> wrote:
>> On 08/10/2014 10:02 PM, Bill vance wrote:
>>> On 8/10/14, David Kuntadi <d.kuntadi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On Sun, Aug 10, 2014 at 4:47 PM, Bill vance <faptagon at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Howdy folks;
>>>>>
>>>>> I've got a really nasty permission problem in my incomming
>>>>> email directory.
>>>>>
>>>>> As root, I can read, write, rename, or delete whatever files
>>>>> are there.  Users, however, cannot even use ls, cd to it, or
>>>>> do anything else, when they used to be able to do all the
>>>>> stuff I mentioned above for root.  None of the email progs
>>>>> work for them.  I can see the file listings there, but the
>>>>> users can't.
>>>>>
>>>>> I've tried chmod, setfacl, mc, and even a script called, "permz",
>>>>> but to no avail.  I did finally manage to remove the, "sticky bit",
>>>>> but still. nothing works.
>>>>>
>>>>> Anyone know how to fix this?
>>>> Can you post the output of "sudo ls -l" of the said directory?
>>>>
>>>> DK
>>> Too many files to waste everyone's time and list space on,
>>> but they're all the same, so I'll send a short sample.
>>>
>>> -rw-r--r-- 1 cen          mail  334003  Aug 10 01:33 cen-a9
>>> -rw-r--r-- 1 col           mail           0  Aug 10 01:33 col
>>> -rw-r--r-- 1 cre           mail  396748  Aug 10 01:33 cre
>>> -rw-r--r-- 1 cre           mail  378183  Aug 10 01:33 cre-a1
>>> -rw-r--r-- 1 cs            mail           0  Aug 10 01:33 cs
>>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root          root           0  Aug 10 01:33 dvdusr
>>> -rw-r--r-- 1 fap           mail  104223  Aug 10 01:33 fap
>>>
>>> I should mention that this is a fresh install of kubuntu 12.04.4.
>>>
>>> Bill
>>>
>> What are the permissions of the directory? If group/others have no
>> execution rights for the directory,  they can not see files in that
>> directory.
>>
>> Regards, Guus.
> Oops, here ya go.....
>
> drwxrwxrwx  2 root        users       20480 Aug 10 02:18 mail
>
> and above that:
>
> lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root      15  Aug  8 18:55 mail -> /var/spool/mail
>        and,
> drw-rw-rw- 15 root root   4096 Aug 10 01:39 spool
>
> Bill
>
I think the problem is no execute permission on the /var/spool/mail
directory.  "mail" above (presumably /var/mail) is a symbolic link whose
permissions are ignored.  Try this:  Change the permissions of
/var/spool/mail to 755

    chmod 755 /var/spool/mail

and the permissions of all the users' mail files in /var/spool/mail to 660

    chmod 660 /var/spool/mail/*

Jim