FLEXnet on Ubuntu 12.04

Recently I upgraded our license server to Ubuntu 12.04. Following this upgrade at boot the license manager fails to start. Interestingly, in the syslog there following relevant entry appears:

Jan 29 20:08:07 localhost kernel: [ 2056.080552] non-matching-uid
symlink following attempted in sticky world-writable directory by
lmboot_TMW (fsuid 0 != 1000)

The error message looks like a security error of some sort. The closest thing I can find is discussed over at:

http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/32110/what-does-the-following-kernel-message-mean

As far as I understand at boot the system launches

/etc/init.d/flexnet

which is trying to launch

/etc/lmboot_TMW -u [local user name]

If I log in as [local user name] I can manually launch

/etc/lmboot_TMW

Answer 1

[Fernando]

To solve this issue make the directory /var/tmp owned by the user you are using to run the license manager.

Answer 2

[Steve]

You can also add kernel.yama.protected_sticky_symlinks = 0 to /etc/sysctl.conf so that you revert to previous release behavior.

echo "kernel.yama.protected_sticky_symlinks = 0" | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf

Found at:

http://superuser.com/questions/510871/symlink-path-can-be-followed-manually-but-cd-returns-permission-denied

http://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/Ubuntu1204Symlinks

Answer 3

[Clif Presser]

Using a sub-directory of /var/tmp worked for me.

1. Create /var/tmp/matlab.
2. Set the owner of the directory to your matlab user.
3. Make a backup copy of $MATLAB/etc/lmopts.sh
4. Edit $MATLAB/etc/lmopts.sh, changing occurrences of /var/tmp to /var/tmp/matlab

The first three steps are:

sudo mkdir /var/tmp/matlab
sudo chown matlab /var/tmp/matlab
sudo cp /PATH/TO/MATLAB/etc/lmopts.sh /PATH/TO/MATLAB/etc/lmopts.sh_bak

So far I've seen no ill effects.