/dev/tty keeps changing permissions..?

[Matthew D. Fuller]

On Sat, Jun 07, 2003 at 10:21:17PM -0700 I heard the voice of
Thomas Park, and lo! it spake thus:
> Hello,
> 
> I've been having an interesting problem with my FreeBSD 5.0 install -
> for whatever reason, the permissions and ownership on /dev/tty keep on
> being automatically changed in such a way that it becomes impossible for
> most users of the system to initiate outbound SSH sessions.

If you're having a problem with ssh, /dev/tty permissions have nothing to
do with it.  It's something of a phantom device which always refers to
YOUR tty.  YOUR tty will naturally be owned by you, and either 620 or 600
(depending on mesg(1)).  Vis:

-----
[18:10:13] mortis:~
(ttyp3):{672}% whoami
fullermd
[18:10:17] mortis:~
(ttyp3):{673}% ls -al /dev/tty
crw-------  1 fullermd  tty    5,   3 Jun  8 18:10 /dev/tty
[18:10:23] mortis:~
(ttyp3):{674}% ssh -t -lmatt localhost "ls -al /dev/tty"
Password:
crw--w----  1 matt  tty    5,  23 Jun  8 18:10 /dev/tty
Connection to localhost closed.
-----

So, something else would be causing your ssh permissions.  We'd need more
details to try and track that down.


-- 
Matthew Fuller     (MF4839)   |  fullermd at over-yonder.net
Systems/Network Administrator |  http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/

"The only reason I'm burning my candle at both ends, is because I
      haven't figured out how to light the middle yet"