iraf.net

>From massey@lowell.edu Mon Oct 23 14:30:32 2000
From: Phil Massey <massey@lowell.edu>
To: mfitzpatrick@noao.edu
Subject: "allocate" problem and nosuid....Hi, Mike---I re-installed IRAF today on the general lowell server, and encoutnered only
one (!) problem: I can't allocate tape drives.What happens is the following. If I am logged onto tofu and do a "all mta"
or even an "all tofu!mta" I get the following message:cl> all mta
Error: uid of $hbin/alloc.e must be set to 0 (root)
(rerun install script $hlib/install, or)
(login as root: cd $hbin; chown 0 alloc.e)
ERROR: cannot allocate device mta
allocate (device=mta)However, I've checked the permissions on alloc.e (the one being served!) and
they look fine, EXACTLY as you said they should:cl> !ls -l alloc.e
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root massey 212776 Jul 15 1999 alloc.eI went back and checked my notes, and when I had a similar problem on tofu
a few months ago you suggested I check to see if the iraf disk was mounted
nosuid. It was, and I changed that. However, our system manager is reluctant
to change this on the general server disk. Is there a workaround, other
than just not allocating the drive?thanks,
phil>From fitz Mon Oct 23 14:44:14 2000
To: massey@lowell.edu
Subject: Re: "allocate" problem and nosuid....Hi Phil,
The only thing which may work would be to move the alloc.e binary
to a local disk and make it suid root there (with a symlink in the iraf
hbin$alloc.e pointing to it). But this would only work for your machine,
and if you're the only user then just not allocating the drive is just
as good. If the drive's connected to tofu directly and there's no chance
some other user might access it then that's probably the simplest unless
you can change the sysadmin's mind (and the latter's only necessary of you
want to alloc other drives on the net).Cheers,
-Mike>From massey@lowell.edu Mon Oct 23 14:52:37 2000
To: fitz@noao.edu
Subject: Re: "allocate" problem and nosuid....Well, actually, Deidre has an exabyte on her machine, and I have a DSS-4 DAT
on mine, and since we're both getting iraf now from this other server, it
really would be nice to be able to allocate and the like. When there's
only two of us it's not a problme, but once the students arrive and need
to use my or her drive...well, it prevents unfortunate mistakes (like my
leaving a data tape in!)I'm going to fiddle with your idea of moving alloc.e to someplace else...
thanks,
phil>From massey@lowell.edu Mon Oct 23 15:05:51 2000
To: fitz@noao.edu
Subject: hahahahaha!So, I did this symbolic link to alloc.e on tofu (where the disk IS mounted
without the nosuid option) and it works fine for me on tofu, works fine for
me from another machine, and works fine for Deidre from another machine.
So, kludging as this is, it does work! Thanks for the idea.