Postfix question

[Bob McClure Jr]

On Thu, Sep 30, 2004 at 11:32:33AM -0700, Rick Stevens wrote:
> Waldher, Travis R wrote:
> >
> >They aren't hard links, editing one, doesn't show up as a change in the
> >other.
> >
> >So the question becomes, does postfix modify in anyway, those files
> >under postfix/etc.  
> 
> No, it doesn't modify the files, but remember that postfix runs in a
> chrooted environment.  Links (be they symbolic or hard) can't back up
> beyond what the chroot directory is, so postfix won't be able to see the
> targets of the links. That's why it needs local copies and not links
> to the system files.

Umm, I disagree about hard links.  In the chrooted environment,
/etc/passwd contains the same inode that /etc/passwd does in the real
world.  So changes made to it (as long as the inode doesn't change) in
the real world will be seen in the chroot environment.  But as I
mentioned earlier you couldn't hard-link them anyway if they are on
separate filesystems.  I normally put /var/spool on a different FS on
my server installations.

> This is similar to setting up a chrooted anonymous FTP server...if you
> want user and group names to be displayed for the "ls" command, the FTP
> server must have copies of /etc/passwd and /etc/group in its own
> filesystem.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> - Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
> - VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
> -                                                                    -
> -           This message printed using recycled bandwidth            -
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Cheers,
-- 
Bob McClure, Jr.             Bobcat Open Systems, Inc.
robertmcclure at earthlink.net  http://www.bobcatos.com
Grace happens.