/var/log/news permission denied

tt08 · 10-30-2004, 07:06 AM

I have SUSE 9.1 Pro. when I boot up, I got a bunch of these errors:
/var/log/news/news.crit : permission denied
/var/log/news/news.err : permission denied
/var/log/news/news.notice : permission denied

When I try to cd to /var/log/news to change the permission for these files, I got:

linux:/var/log/news # ls -ltr
/bin/ls: news.err: Permission denied
/bin/ls: news.notice: Permission denied
/bin/ls: news.crit: Permission denied

any ideas?

Thanks!

bigrigdriver · 10-30-2004, 07:33 AM

In SuSE 8.2, the users and group for /var/log/news are news:news. The permissions are rw- --- ---. Su to root, then cd to /var/log. Give the following commands: "chown -R news:news news", followed by "chmod u+rw-x news, go-rwx news". See if that clears it up.

tt08 · 10-30-2004, 09:35 AM

Still the same error:

linux:/var/log # cd /var/log
linux:/var/log # pwd
/var/log
linux:/var/log # chown -R news:news news
chown: cannot access `news/news.err': Permission denied
chown: cannot access `news/news.notice': Permission denied
chown: cannot access `news/news.crit': Permission denied

weird! root should be able to chmod or chown of any file!

any idea?

neilman · 10-30-2004, 09:53 AM

Is your NNTP server up and running right now? Not sure it's an access clearance issue (since you're root), but more of a busy file issue. Try killing your NNTP server and then going directly into that /var/log/news/ directory and trying an ls to see if you can see anything.

trickykid · 10-30-2004, 10:19 AM

Why are you chowning with a -R? An even easier idea would be to add yourself to the news group, then chmod the /var/log/news directory so the news group has read access. Or even better, setup sudo and just become the news user.. sudo su - news ; then you'd have access.