Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!hal!nic.MR.NET!umn-cs!brsmith From: brsmith@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU (Brian R. Smith) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: Why is xterm suid root. Message-ID: <11236@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU> Date: 20 Feb 89 23:43:16 GMT References: <8902191022.AA28931@sunchat.sun.oz> Reply-To: brsmith@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu (Brian R. Smith) Organization: CSci Dept., University of Minnesota, Mpls. Lines: 21 In article bob@tinman.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) writes: > Why is xterm suid root? > >It needs to be able to update /etc/utmp for who(1), w(1), and >finger(1) to see that you exist. Which is a VERY bad thing on a Sequent - if init or the kernel discovers that the number of entries in /etc/utmp is larger than your license allows, your machine will IMMEDIATELY shutdown and (from looking at the source; I haven't tried it) not go multi-user again. So we can't run xterm suid root. On all of our Suns, however, /etc/utmp is world read/writable. We don't need to run xterm suid root. I don't think that this is a big problem, but it would be nice (love that passive voice) if it were printed in BIG, BOLD letters in the installation instructions. Brian brsmith@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu