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From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: Is there something like 'shutdownrc' at SunOS 4.1 ?
Message-ID: <1991May31.211123.22261@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: 31 May 91 21:11:23 GMT
References: <868@cadlab.sublink.ORG> <1214@keele.keele.ac.uk> <1991May31.164829.13125@micrognosis.co.uk>
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Lines: 21

In article <1991May31.164829.13125@micrognosis.co.uk> jharuni@micrognosis.co.uk (Jonathan Haruni) writes:
>
>The main reason shutdown is not a script is that it is suid-root, and
>it is not fashionable to have such shellscripts these days.

  Not on my system.  That would allow any peon to shutdown the system.

>But if you are contemplating having shutdown (which runs as root) call
>a shellscript, then you'd be no better off.  You may as well just write

  Why is this?  Most of the security holes in suid scripts are in the way
the shell can be fooled while invoking the script, and not in the fact of
using a script.  Otherwise you would have to prohibit root from using any
shell script ever.


-- 
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  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940