COMMAND

    setprivgrp()

SYSTEMS AFFECTED

    HP-UX 10.X, possibly others

PROBLEM

    "...Only processes  with an  effective user  ID equal  to the file
    owner  or  a  user  having  appropriate  privileges can change the
    ownership  of  a  file.   If  privilege  groups are supported, the
    owner of a  file can change  the ownership only  as a member  of a
    privilege  group  allowing  CHOWN,  as  set  up  by the setprivgrp
    command (see setprivgrp(1M)).   All users get the  CHOWN privilege
    by default..."

        $ date
        Thu Nov  7 11:17:24 PST 1996
        $ getprivgrp
        global privileges: CHOWN
        $ pwd
        /home/john
        $ id
        uid=110(john) gid=999(bla)
        $ mkdir bla
        $ chown john bla
        $ chmod 6777 bla
        $ ls -ldi bla
          45696 drwsrwsrwx   2 john     bla           24 Nov  7 11:12 bla
        $ chown root bla
        $ ls -ldi tmp
          45696 drwsrwsrwx   2 root     bla           24 Nov  7 11:12 bla
        $ cd bla
        $ touch hello
        $ ls -ldi hello
          45697 -rw-rw-rw-   1 john   bla            0 Nov  7 11:12 hello
        $ chmod 6777 hello
        $ chown root hello
        $ ls -ldi hello
          45697 -rwxrwxrwx   1 root     bla            0 Nov  7 11:12 hello

SOLUTION

    If you don't want  your HP-UX system to  allow users to give  away
    files (which is the standard  SysV behavior) create a file  called
    /etc/privgroup  with  "-g"  in  it,  and  this  will be used as an
    argument to a setprivgrp call on startup which will prevent this.