Permissions differ on Š

I installed Leopard shortly after it was released. In the last several
weeks I have noticed a recurring message when I run Disk Utility
Verify/Repair Disk Permissions.

Repair Disk Permissions will get rid of the message pasted below, but it
will reappear at some point latter on. I have not been able to determine
the cause of this message.


Repairing permissions for ³Macintosh HD²
Permissions differ on "private/var/log/secure.log", should be -rw-------
, they are -rw-r----- .

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Chris H. <Chris.H.DeleteThis@wrongaddress.invalid> writes:

> I installed Leopard shortly after it was released. In the last several
> weeks I have noticed a recurring message when I run Disk Utility
> Verify/Repair Disk Permissions.
>
> Repair Disk Permissions will get rid of the message pasted below, but it
> will reappear at some point latter on. I have not been able to determine
> the cause of this message.

When the weekly system maintenance is run, and this log file is rotated,
the permissions on it get restored to their former, incorrect mode.

> Repairing permissions for ³Macintosh HD²
> Permissions differ on "private/var/log/secure.log", should be -rw-------
> , they are -rw-r----- .

Here's some reading from the past about this. Sad to see it has not
gotten fixed in 10.5.

This is not necessary for OS 10.3 bcause it NEVER rotates secure.log(!).

And, I don't have 10.5, so I don't know if the locations mentioned below
are the same for it as they are in 10.4. But, this will at least get you
pointed in the right direction, if you want to deal with this. I would
not call it a major problem, but is it annoying? Yes.

Billy Y..


Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 14:03:08
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Re: 10.4.7 is out
>From: Brian Hughes <invalid.email.DeleteThis@hughesvideo.invalid>

me.DeleteThis@home.spamsucks.ca (Király) wrote:

> Mine's even shorter; my system only repaired the secure.log permission.

That's been a permissions problem for sometime now, Apple needs to fix
that. There's a quick fix for that if you want it:

Create a plain text file and add this text:

#!/bin/sh -
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin
cd /var/log
if [ -f "secure.log" ]; then
echo "Setting secure.log permissions"
chmod 600 "secure.log"
fi

Save the file to /etc/weekly.local <-- weekly.local is the file name
and can't have a .txt extension

In the Terminal run the following two commands at the prompt and supply
your admin password when requested:

sudo chmod 555 /etc/weekly.local

sudo chown root:wheel /etc/weekly.local

When the weekly periodic task gets executed it rotates the secure.log
file and creates a fresh one. The fresh one has the wrong permissions.
The weekly.local script is run at the end of the weekly periodic task
and corrects the secure.log permissions.

For creating the weekly.local file I prefer BBEdit (as I own a copy)
although TextWrangler is just as good for this. TextEdit will work but
make sure it's a plain text file and doesn't have a .txt extension. You
probably want to set the encoding to "Western (Mac OS Roman)" as well.

If you have another way of setting the owner and permissions on the
weekly.local file you don't need to use the Terminal. I set the owner
and permissions the same as the weekly periodic script:

-r-xr-xr-x root wheel /etc/periodic/weekly/500.weekly

You could just fix the periodic script so it creates the new file with
the proper permissions but you risk having that file overwritten by a
system update. Until Apple fixes this, the local file is the best option.

--
Brian Hughes
usenet at hughesvideo dot com