Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 08:38:50 -0700 (PDT)
From: David Wolfskill <dhw@whistle.com>
To: A.Nati@cisco.it, brandon@engulf.net
Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: system ("makemap") error...
Message-ID: <199808061538.IAA24245@pau-amma.whistle.com>
In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19980806144443.006cd6f4@posta.cisco.it>
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>Date: Thu, 06 Aug 1998 14:44:43 +0200 >From: Antonio Nati <A.Nati@cisco.it> >In 08.02 06/08/98 -0400, hai scritto: >>How are you SU'ing it to root? >In my case it decides it has not the correct uid. >Changing the owner of "/etc/virtusertable.db" to httpd's uid makes all the >joke work. >Now I'm wondering about: >1) does "system ()" pass the su'ed uid to the executed command? No; it's not system()'s job to do that. I believe it's the kernel's job (via exec() & friends) to do it; I'm sure someone will provide necessary correction. :-} What's hurting you, I expect, is that you're specifying that the output should be created via (shell) redirection, and *that* is done by the calling environment (shell, httpd, whatever), well before exec() has a chance to do anything at all -- recall that when the program *starts*, it already has stdout opened.... This is the same kind of issue that (somewhat) limits the functionality of (say) "sudo": if /etc/foo is a root-owned file, mode 500 (say), you can't (as a "normal" user) issue sudo cat /etc/termcap >/etc/foo for exactly the same reason -- the ">/etc/foo" is handled by the shell before sudo gets invoked, and you don't have permission to scribble on the file. (Similarly, if /hidden is a root-owned directory, mode 700, you can't do a "sudo cd /hidden"; it actually doesn't really make any sense, since "cd" is a shell built-in, since it is used to merely maintain a figment of the shell's imagination -- that being the notion of your "current working directory.) >2) is it correct that makemap checks getuid and not instead geteuid? Based on the above, I don't think that's relevant. david -- David Wolfskill UNIX System Administrator dhw@whistle.com voice: (650) 577-7158 pager: (650) 371-4621 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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