how to make an executable run as another user

[mailing lists at MacTutor]

Rich,

Someone else had responded to your post explaining that setuid does not  
work with shell scripts. Nor does it work with any interpreted input.  
The following article might help explain this (and others):

http://www.evolt.org/article/UNIX_File_Permissions_and_Setuid_Part_2/ 
18/263/

QUOTE: "In most UNIX kernels there exists what is called a 'race  
condition' when executing scripts. Scripts are pieces of code which are  
interpreted by, strangely enough, interpreters. Common examples of  
interpreters are perl, sed, and awk. So when you have in your perl code  
#!/usr/local/bin/perl it tells the operating system to start executing  
the perl interpreter with the current script as input. Between the time  
that the perl interpreter starts executing and the time that it reads  
in your script the 'race condition' exists. At this time, a mischievous  
person could 'win the race' and be able to replace your script with  
another. And if your script is running as setuid, that person's script  
would run as your user! So their script could do anything that you  
could do from the command line. As a result, most UNIX kernels will  
disable users from running scripts as setuid. The most common way  
around this is to create a wrapper program around your script. A  
wrapper, in this context, is a small program, possibly written in C,  
that when executed will simply run your script. The 'race condition'  
does not exist for real executables and so you won't be thwarted by the  
kernel itself."

I'm not exceptionally well versed in this stuff. But I think this is  
what you're after.

Alex


On Sep 17, 2004, at 3:50 PM, Richard Bradley wrote:

> Um. I feel silly asking this. But I can't work it out.
>
> I want a shell script to run as another user. I always thought this  
> was easy
> to do with the setuid bit, but never tried it before. I read "man  
> chmod" and
> found this:
>
> .....
> 4000    (the setuid bit).  Executable files with this bit set will
>                  run with effective uid set to the uid of the file  
> owner.
> .....
> s       The set-user-ID-on-execution and set-group-ID-on-execution
>                    bits.
> ....
>
> And off I went. I wrote a shell script to output the current uid. I  
> chown'ed
> it to another user. I "chmod +s"ed it. I ran it.
>
> It didn't work.
>
> -----
>
> rtb27# cat test
> #! /bin/sh
> whoami
> rtb27# ll test
> -rwsr-sr-x  1 rich wheel  20 Sep 17 19:34 test
> rtb27# ./test
> root
>
> --------
>
> Um. Help?
>
>
>
> Rich
>
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>

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