Re: setuid bit neccesary for GNOME?

["Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH" <allbery ece cmu edu>]

On Friday, January 19, 2001 09:26:07 -0600, mcnichol austin ibm com wrote:
+-----
| I would double check this.  I would guess that without setuid,
| xscreensaver cannot get to the password file.  The effect of this would
| be that regular users would not be able to unlock their screen.
+--->8

It will work on Linux because Linux-PAM will call out to a setuid program 
to check the password... which only works for the invoker; the program 
won't check anyone else's password.  Thus, the user's password will work 
but root's won't.

On other systems which use shadow passwords of any stripe (including AIX's 
/etc/security stuff) it must be setuid root.

--
brandon s. allbery     [os/2][linux][solaris][japh]   allbery kf8nh apk net
system administrator        [WAY too many hats]         allbery ece cmu edu
electrical and computer engineering                                   KF8NH
carnegie mellon university     ["better check the oblivious first" -ke6sls]