Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site hadron.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!qantel!lll-crg!seismo!rlgvax!hadron!jsdy
From: jsdy@hadron.UUCP (Joseph S. D. Yao)
Newsgroups: net.unix,net.unix-wizards,net.micro.att,net.bugs.usg
Subject: Re: Sv.2 suid bits
Message-ID: <98@hadron.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 27-Nov-85 23:19:42 EST
Article-I.D.: hadron.98
Posted: Wed Nov 27 23:19:42 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 29-Nov-85 10:37:23 EST
References: <123@rexago1.UUCP>
Reply-To: jsdy@hadron.UUCP (Joseph S. D. Yao)
Distribution: net
Organization: Hadron, Inc., Fairfax, VA
Lines: 20
Xref: watmath net.unix:6422 net.unix-wizards:15893 net.micro.att:715 net.bugs.usg:385

In article <123@rexago1.UUCP> rich@rexago1.UUCP (K. Richard Magill) writes:
>On SV.2 (3b2, pc7300 (Safari)) suid bits do not work on shell scripts.  Am
>I just silly or don't I remember them working on 2 other UN*X-ish (TNIX,
>XENIX) environments?

Setuid bits never used to work on shell scripts, because the shell
scripts were/are not executed -- the  s h e l l  is/was executed
with the script name as argument.  In 4BSD and 4BSD-ische systems,
if the first two chars in a shell script are "#!" and the rest of
the first line is the name of a program (most often a shell) to
run with that script as input, then the kernel runs that program,
but some other effects are as if the script had been directly
executed; e.g., the setuid and getuid bits are honoured.

Note that on non-4BSD-ische systems where the C shell emulates
this behaviour, the side effects still don't exist because the
kernel is not doing the executing.
-- 

	Joe Yao		hadron!jsdy@seismo.{CSS.GOV,ARPA,UUCP}