NetWare SFTP can't navigate the file system or see some paths

  • 3015243
  • 07-Dec-2007
  • 27-Apr-2012

Environment

Novell NetWare 6.5
NetWare OpenSSH (SSHD.NLM)

Situation

Sessions of SFTP (part of the SSH suite) can't see some paths that should be visible, or can't navigate from the home directory to other areas to which the user has rights.
NetWare file systems use a concept called "visibility rights" to allow users to see paths leading to locations where they have effective rights. For example, if user "bob" has effective rights (either explicit or inherited) to vol1:users\home\bob, then bob should be able to CD to the root directory of vol1, and see that a subdirectory called 'users' exists. Even though bob does not have a explicit or inherited trustee assignment at vol1:\ or at vol1:\users\, he has visibility rights so he can see the path that leads to the locations of his actual rights.
SFTP sessions have not been successfully getting visibility rights, which interferes with their ability to see some paths and navigate around the file system. This issue was tracked to a LIBC.NLM problem.

Resolution

The corrected LIBC.NLM is available in NetWare 6.5 SP7. For those on SP6 who cannot yet apply the new support pack, a separate LIBC update patch is available as libcsp6b.zip. Search for this at https://support.novell.com/patches.html .