Re: [Bug-sysutils] Permissions on /etc/passwd

[Alfred M\. Szmidt]

   I was looking at the permissions issue on /etc/passwd and now I am
   starting to question whether it should be 644?  Obviously ideally
   not, but after running things like "whoami", it apparently gets the
   username from /etc/passwd and therefore needs read access.  Is this
   just a bug in GNU/Hurd or is this a typical GNU/*nix issue?

This is how /etc/passwd works.  To get any kind of info about a user,
tools look in /etc/passwd.  So it must be 644.  It is the only place
where things like the {U,G}ID vs Name mapping is stored, which is
needed when you wish to list owners/groups of a bunch of files.