Bug 1176

Summary:	updatedb cron job gives me an empty locatedb
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	jay
Component:	findutils	Assignee:	David Lawrence <dkl>
Status:	CLOSED WORKSFORME	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	5.0
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	1999-02-18 22:38:59 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description jay 1999-02-15 18:35:16 UTC

the /etc/cron.daily job creates a valid locatedb in /tmp but
does not move it to the /var/lib/locatedb location.

It somehow creates an empty file in /var/lib

[root@texnet lib]# ls -al /var/lib/locatedb*
-rw-------   1 root     root            0 Feb 15 10:28
/var/lib/locatedb
[root@texnet lib]# ls -al /tmp/*
-rw-------   1 nobody   users      665408 Feb 15 10:31
/tmp/locatedb.a13148.n.a13181
[root@texnet lib]# rpm -q findutils
findutils-4.1-24

when I run the updatedb command as root the proper file is
created.

My 5.2 systems do not do this.

Comment 1 jay 1999-02-15 18:48:59 UTC

I'm a twit.  This system was converted from slackware to redhat
several months ago. I preserved my /etc/passwd and /etc/group files.
Apparently nobody was set to be # 65535, where RH expects it to be
#99  I guess some inherited permissions based on userid, etc.  I
diddled the passwd file to some semblance of RH ism et viola, c'est
marche.

Question though. Does this imply that the nobody user is _priviledged_
somehow?

Comment 2 Jeff Johnson 1999-02-18 22:38:59 UTC

Nobody is "privileged" only in the sense that uid's below some
small number (like 100 or 500) are usually assigned by a vendor.
Other conventions, such as nobody:x:65535:65535: are also common.