[pkg-ntp-maintainers] Bug#517388: ntp: Wrong permissions/owner with old kernel

[simon at technocool.net]

Package: ntp
Version: 1:4.2.4p4+dfsg-8
Severity: normal


Upgrading from Etch to Lenny, this server failed to install a current 2.6 kernel but retained 2.6.8.

When I corrected this error and rebooted, I discovered that the latest files in /var/log/ntpstats 
were now owned by root not ntp.

I assume that the switch to user (-u), failed (presumably as the relevant features are not
present in the old kernel).

Fix is trivial (chown or remove the relevant files).

However if I've understood this correctly I thought it might be worth ensuring that the package installs only with supporting 
kernels,
or perhaps more importantly that ntp check that any drop of root privilege  works correctly before writing to disk.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_GB, LC_CTYPE=en_GB (charmap=ISO-8859-1)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages ntp depends on:
ii  adduser                  3.110           add and remove users and groups
ii  libc6                    2.7-18          GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcap1                  1:1.10-14       support for getting/setting POSIX.
ii  libedit2                 2.11~20080614-1 BSD editline and history libraries
ii  libncurses5              5.7+20081213-1  shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  libssl0.9.8              0.9.8g-15       SSL shared libraries
ii  lsb-base                 3.2-20          Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  netbase                  4.34            Basic TCP/IP networking system

Versions of packages ntp recommends:
ii  perl                          5.10.0-19  Larry Wall's Practical Extraction 

Versions of packages ntp suggests:
ii  ntp-doc                 1:4.2.4p4+dfsg-8 Network Time Protocol documentatio

-- no debconf information