[TriLUG] Strange perms change..

[Tanner Lovelace]

Brian A. Henning wrote:

> Hi folks,
>   Quick question for pondering:
> 
> I've a perl script that runs as a cron job once a minute.  Inexplicably, I
> started receiving crond e-mails saying ..."/usr/bin/perl: Bad interpreter:
> Permission denied."
> 
> I nosed around and discovered that this was because, strangely, the user
> execute bit had been cleared on all the files in the directory in which that
> script resides.  chmod u+x fixed the problem, but I'm very curious for
> insight as to why the user execute bit would have suddenly cleared itself..
> 
> I am running a Norton Corporate Edition (7.something I think) virus scan
> from my Windoze XP machine that includes a SMB share that includes the
> aforementioned directory.  The timing of the crond messages could
> potentially (although I am unsure) coincide with the time that the virus
> scanner reached into the mounted directory tree.  Is there any precedent of
> Windows virus scanners futzing with file permissions on Samba shares?
> 
> Yes, I am aware that scanning the Linux machine from the Windows machine is
> neither efficient nor exhaustive.  I just didn't bother deselecting the
> mounted volume from the scanner's selection.
> 
> Thanks,
> ~Brian
> 

What distribution are you running?

Cheers,
Tanner