bash weirdness

[Shawn O'Shea]

>
> I've tried googling for these symptoms, but so far I haven't found a match.
> Has anyone else run across this odd behavior? What could be causing it?
>
> The server with the broken behavior is running CentOS release 5.2,
> and bash is bash-3.2-21.el5.
>

A great suggestion I've seen on this list in the past (pretty sure this one
comes from Ben Scott) is to run an rpm verify (since you are on an rpm based
OS). This compares package metadata with what is actually installed to see
if there are discrepancies. You should get no output if things are ok, but
will get a string with indicators of mismatches if things are not so good.
For example:
[root at vecna ~]# rpm -V bash
[root at vecna ~]# chmod u+s /bin/bash   # This is a no-no, don't give sticky
bit to your shells!
[root at vecna ~]# rpm -V bash
.M......   /bin/bash
[root at vecna ~]# chmod u-s /bin/bash
[root at vecna ~]# rpm -V bash

Here's a summary from"man rpm" of the flags that can appear where the dots
are in the output from verify:


       S file Size differs
       M Mode differs (includes permissions and file type)
       5 MD5 sum differs
       D Device major/minor number mismatch
       L readLink(2) path mismatch
       U User ownership differs
       G Group ownership differs
       T mTime differs

-Shawn
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