> Greetings,
>
> How should chown (or fchown) behave when used on an NFS
> mounted filer share?
>
> I'm trying to set up an anonymous FTP server, using an NFS
> mounted directory
> as my file space. It works fine, until I try to configure anonymous
> uploading. Whenever I try this, I get a "fchown: not owner"
> error. I look
> at the code (wu-ftpd 2.6) and it looks like it fails on a
> series of fchown
> calls.
>
> How can I expect fchown to work? Is this OS dependent? Does the filer
> respond to these calls in a predictable way?
>
> I have a 720 running DataOnTap 5.3.2R1.
By default, only root can chown files. There is an option
called wafl.root_only_chown which is set to on by default.
If you turn it off and have a client that allows non-root users
to chown (most modern version of UNIX do, SunOS 4.x, for example
does not), then the owner of the file can chown a file as well.
Now, if your ftpd is running as root, you have to be sure that
the filesystem is exported with root permissions to the ftp server.
Otherwise, the filer (actually any NFS server) will map root (uid 0)
to nobody. Nobody will probably never own files so the process would
receive a "Not Owner" message even though the process is running with
an effective UID of 0.
I haven't looked at the ftpd code in a while, but this is my first
guess based on the info you provided.
Hope this helps.
-- Adam Fox
NetApp Professional Services, NC
adamfox(a)netapp.com