[BlueOnyx:08334] Sendmail failure: World writable directory

[Richard Morgan]

Afternoon, I had a strange little problem on our BX (CentOS) server this morning.  Sendmail was failing with the following:

Aug 31 07:00:01 s1 sendmail[25057]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root): /etc/mail/sendmail.cf: line 112: fileclass: cannot open '/etc/mail/local-
host-names': World writable directory
Aug 31 07:00:01 s1 sendmail[25057]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root): /etc/mail/sendmail.cf: line 167: fileclass: cannot open '/etc/mail/virtho
sts': World writable directory
Aug 31 07:00:01 s1 sendmail[25057]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root): /etc/mail/sendmail.cf: line 623: fileclass: cannot open '/etc/mail/truste
d-users': World writable directory
Aug 31 07:00:01 s1 sendmail[25068]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root): /etc/mail/sendmail.cf: line 112: fileclass: cannot open '/etc/mail/local-
host-names': World writable directory
Aug 31 07:00:01 s1 sendmail[25068]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root): /etc/mail/sendmail.cf: line 167: fileclass: cannot open '/etc/mail/virtho
sts': World writable directory
Aug 31 07:00:01 s1 sendmail[25068]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root): /etc/mail/sendmail.cf: line 623: fileclass: cannot open '/etc/mail/truste
d-users': World writable directory
Aug 31 07:00:01 s1 sendmail[25068]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root): /etc/mail/sendmail.cf: line 1745: Xclamav: local socket name /var/run/cla
mav/clamav-milter.sock unsafe: World writable directory
Aug 31 07:00:01 s1 sendmail[25068]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root): /etc/mail/sendmail.cf: line 1746: Xspamassassin: local socket name /var/r
un/spamass.sock unsafe: World writable directory
Aug 31 07:00:01 s1 sm-msp-queue[25090]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root): /etc/mail/submit.cf: line 544: fileclass: cannot open '/etc/mail/trus
ted-users': World writable directory

A bit of Googling around and I eventually found:

chmod 755 /
chmod 755 /etc
chmod 755 /etc/mail

Which fixed the problem... even though it seemsed a bit vicious (I should have taken a note of the mode before changing them, but rather keen to see it fixed).

I was just wondering has anyone else seen this problem and what would have caused it?  There were a few updates overnight, but nothing that should have stopped and started sendmail, not AFAIK.

Thanks

Richard
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