sendmail -bi problem - Group writable
 

Hi there,

On my RHEL 5.1 Server, when trying to run the aliases.db, getting the following error;
[root@web1 mail]# sendmail -bi
WARNING: Group writable directory /
WARNING: Group writable directory /
WARNING: Group writable directory /
hash map "Alias0": unsafe map file /etc/aliases.db: Group writable directory
WARNING: cannot open alias database /etc/aliases
Cannot create database for alias file /etc/aliases

However, I tried to check all the directories which sendmail is complaining and not seen any directory in the list have group writable.

Can some body experience this and have a solution/suggestion please guide me. The sendmail version I am using is "sendmail-8.13.8-2.el5"

TIA
Jose

"/" = the root filesystem. It appears to be complaining that you root wide open which is really a bad idea for many many reasons.

Try running the following series of commands and see if you have the same results:

ls -ld /
drwxr-xr-x 25 root root 4096 Jan 10 15:16 /

ls -ld /etc
drwxr-xr-x 101 root root 12288 Mar 12 04:02 /etc

ls -ld /etc/mail
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Feb 24 14:34 /etc/mail

My results came from a RHEL5 system which is running sendmail correctly so yours should probably match mine.

To set the permissions use the chmod command:
chmod 755 /
chmod 755 /etc
chmod 755 /etc/mail

To set the ownership/group use the chown command:
chown root:root /
chown root:root /etc
chown root:root /etc/mail

Thank you, it worked for me.

Jose