Re: Orphan files

[Tim Nelson]

On Sun, 11 Dec 2004 wbmccarty@gmail.com wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm hardening a Linux configuration by deleting unnecessary users and
> groups. Deleting a user or group orphans any files owned by the deleted
> user or group. I'd like to change the ownership of any such files to
> nobody.nobody. However, it's not clear to me how to accomplish this
> using cfengine, other than by running a find command such as "find /
> /boot -xdev -nogroup -exec /bin/chgrp nobody {} \;" before deleting the
> users and groups. Can anyone suggest a way that's more in line with
> cfengine's approach?

        Try combining filter (see link below) with the "files" section.

http://www.iu.hio.no/cfengine/docs/cfengine-Reference.html#filters

	Incidentally, I recall being told by someone that the "nobody" 
user/group has special meaning to NFS, and shouldn't be used for this kind 
of thing (I think the suggested solution was another user with a different 
name, maybe "orphans" would be appropriate in your case).

        Here's something relevant I found:
-----------------------------------------
root_squash - Requests from root clients are mapped to the nobody user and 
group ID so they will only have file privileges associated with other.
-----------------------------------------

	Maybe someone who actually uses NFS will have some more info, and 
be able to chip in :).

--
Tim Nelson
Server Administrator
WebAlive Technologies Global
Level 1 Innovation Building, Digital Harbour
1010 LaTrobe Street
Docklands, Melbourne, 
Vic, 3008
Phone: +61 3 9934 0812
Fax: +61 3 9934 0899
E-mail: tim.nelson@webalive.biz
http://www.webalive.biz/