“cannot open '/etc/mail/trusted-users': Group writable directory”

Question

[root@arcade mail]# ls -l /etc/ | grep mail; ls -l /etc/mail; service sendmail start
drwxr-xr-x.  2 root root       4096 2011-01-27 20:06 mail
-rw-r--r--   1 root root        272 2009-11-17 21:13 mailcap
-rw-r--r--   1 root root       1968 2010-10-26 14:44 mail.rc
total 192
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   469 2007-08-27 11:25 access
-rw-r-----. 1 root root 12288 2011-01-27 20:06 access.db
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root     0 2010-09-30 14:25 aliasesdb-stamp
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   233 2007-04-12 15:35 domaintable
-rw-r-----. 1 root root 12288 2011-01-27 20:06 domaintable.db
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  5584 2010-03-27 21:10 helpfile
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    64 2007-04-12 15:35 local-host-names
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   997 2007-04-12 15:35 mailertable
-rw-r-----. 1 root root 12288 2011-01-27 20:06 mailertable.db
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root  2700 2008-12-19 13:23 make
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    92 2008-12-03 18:29 Makefile
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 58439 2010-03-27 21:10 sendmail.cf
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  7202 2008-12-03 18:29 sendmail.mc
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 41521 2010-03-27 21:10 submit.cf
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   941 2010-03-27 21:09 submit.mc
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   127 2007-04-12 15:35 trusted-users
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  1847 2007-04-12 15:35 virtusertable
-rw-r-----. 1 root root 12288 2011-01-27 20:06 virtusertable.db
Starting sendmail: 451 4.0.0 /etc/mail/sendmail.cf: line 87: fileclass: cannot open '/etc/mail/local-host-names': Group writable directory
451 4.0.0 /etc/mail/sendmail.cf: line 596: fileclass: cannot open '/etc/mail/trusted-users': Group writable directory
                                                           [FAILED]

Neither /etc/mail nor /etc/mail/trusted-users is group-writable. Why is sendmail complaining?

Answer 1

Looks like your /etc has wrong permission. It should be 755 and owned by root. So, do the following commands and try again:

# chmod g-w /etc
# chown root:root /etc