Permissions on ps

[Dan Nelson]

In the last episode (Jun 06), Midnight Oil said:
>    I'm having difficulty understanding just how it is a regular with
> simple priviliges is able to run ps.
> 
> ps accesses /dev/kmem to get a process list.

No, ps uses the kvm_getprocs library function, which by default uses
the sysctl kern.proc.all to get the process list.  You can force it to
use /dev/kmem with the -M and -N commandline flags, but those are
usually used to debug crashdumps, not live systems.

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson at allantgroup.com