file permissions changed to nobody4

UNIX Solaris
1

Hi there

We have had a weird problem arise recently whereby a file owned by cjo:cjogroup suddenly had it's permissions changed to nobody4:nogroup. The file is mounted off a NetApp Filer volume with the NFS permissions set to Read-Write Access (All Hosts) but no Root Access.

When we tried to change the permissions back on the file as root we could not due to the no Root Access as defined above. We modified these permissions and were successfully able to change them back to the correct settings.

However, my questions are:

  1. How could the permisssions change on a file on a filer mount when no hosts have root permissions?
  2. Can we successfully remove the nobody4 user from the system? I see that this is the SunOS 4.x NFS Anonymous Access User.

We are running a Solaris 10 x86 server on Sun hardware.

Thanks

Steve.

2

A shot in the dark... the ownership is being misrepresented due the use of NFS version 4 with the domains badly configured. Try editing /etc/default/nfs to lock yourself to NFS version 3 and remount.

You can remove nobody4 but I see no benefit in doing so. Stuff like your current problem will just seem more cryptic.