[plug] RH 6 upgrade kills X

[Nick Bannon]

On Wed, Jul 21, 1999 at 02:39:37AM +0800, Ian Kent wrote:
[...]
> > > drwxr-xr-x   3 root     root         1024 Jul 17 19:17 ..
> > 
> > Aah! Wrong permissions on /tmp - should be  drwxrwxrwt
> 
> Aah! I also had the same problem. Caused some bizar error messages. I Have
> had RH6.0 installed for a while. I don't know how or when it happened.
> Changing the mode on /tmp back to normal fixed it.

It's possible for that to happen by unpacking an archive or dump file,
which contains the current directory ".".

zsh-2.02$ ls -ld .
drwxrwxrwt   2 nick     nick         1024 Jul 21 12:01 .
zsh-2.02$ tar tvf wib.tar 
drwxr-xr-x nick/nick         0 1999-07-21 11:59 ./
-rw-r--r-- nick/nick       403 1999-07-21 11:59 motd
-rw-r--r-- nick/nick       403 1999-07-21 11:59 bing
zsh-2.02$ tar xvf wib.tar 
./
motd
bing
zsh-2.02$ ls -ld .
drwxr-xr-x   2 nick     nick         1024 Jul 21 11:59 .

That's one reason why I tend to unpack archives in subdirectories - well
that, and having a mess of files appear in the current directory. It's
also a habit from dealing with PKZip users who don't tend to realise
the existence of subdirectories...

Particularly if you're ever tempted to unpack an archive from your root
directory "/", remember to check that. Working as root will still be fine,
but suddenly all your user programs will start to complain because all
the files they want to access, under /, are no longer available...

Nick.

-- 
  Nick Bannon  | "I made this letter longer than usual because
nick at it.net.au | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal