[pca] Patchdiag file permissions

[Martin Paul]

John Horne wrote:
> On a Solaris 10 system I have just noticed that the patchdiag file
> in /var/tmp has the following permissions:
> 
>   -rw-rw-rw-   1 root     root     2561738 Mar  7 11:21 patchdiag.xref

Yes, that's the default. The reason behind this is that usually the same 
copy of patchdiag.xref is used by all users who run pca on a system. As 
pca by default keeps the xref file up-to-date, it must be writable by 
all users.

If you run pca always under the same user id, use the --xrefown option 
(can be set in one of pca's configuration as well, e.g. by adding 
"xrefown=1" to /etc/pca.conf). This will set the permissions to 644.

Each user who runs pca can also set the xrefdir option to have a private 
copy of the xref file. If xrefdir contains "/home", pca will assume that 
this is a private copy and set xrefown as well.

> Surely a bit risky, and permissions of 664 or perhaps even just 400
> would be better? (Root umask is set to 0022.)

I agree that a world writable file for the patches xref information is 
sub-optimal, but I chose it as the default to reduce problems for beginners.

The read permissions for group/other is not a problem. As the file is 
publically available, everybody can grab a copy from sunsolve anyway.

Martin.