On Sat, 15 Apr 2000, Brian J. Beesley wrote:
> On 15 Apr 00, at 4:22, Henrik Olsen wrote:
>
> > I just tried downloading 20.3, both mprime and sprime, as well as tried
> > with mprime 19.0.2 . None of them where able to detect the network as
> > being available on a machine running Mandrake Linux, kernel version
> > 2.2.14-15mdksecure, probably due to /proc/net not being readable by
> > non-root on such a system, which is a bit of a bummer, as I as I don't
> > want to have to run it as root. :(
> >
> > Does a solution exist for running mprime on such a system or will I have
> > to use this one as well for SNFS sieving instead of GIMPS?
>
> Could I suggest three things to try:
>
> 1) Install mprime with suid privelege. This should enable mprime to
> read /proc/net as though it were running under root even though it's
> actually running under an unpriveleged user.
With all the respect due to George, I haven't seen anything to indicate
that mprime was written with suid in mind, with in any security concient
person would raise big red flags when contemplating this solution.
Actually, if I setuid it, I might as well run it as root, which is what I
wanted to avoid in the first place.
> 2) Get out your hacker's hat and fix the problem in the source code.
> I'd guess that all you need to change is the code which creates the
> /proc pseudofilesystem at boot time. As you've probably found, you
> don't seem to be able to change the permissions on "files" in the
> /proc tree on a running system - even if you _are_ root.
There isn't one piece of code generating the /proc fs, it's done
dynamically by linking in inodes with relevant callback functions for the
operations on them, one call passing one struct per inode, so it can
happen everywhere and tracking down the call/struct for a specific inode
is a real pain.
> 3) Is Mandrake really linux, or just a linux clone? I think the
> latter. If I'm right, then perhaps switching to a genuine linux (Red
> Hat, or SuSe) might be a sensible thing to do. Though the official
> Red Hat distribution retail package is expensive, you can get just
> the CD for about $2, or download the distribution FoC (not
> reccomended unless you have fast internet access!)
Mandrake is really Linux (whatever that means), it's essentially RedHat
with the security holes fixed, and all rpm's compiled for the Pentium.
(as for my connection it's only 2Mb/s)
> Regards
> Brian Beesley
>
--
Henrik Olsen, Dawn Solutions I/S URL=http://www.iaeste.dk/~henrik/
Should we throw another human wave of structural engineers at stabilizing
the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or should we just let the damn thing fall over
and build a tower that doesn't suck?
Neal Stephenson about cruft, In The Beginning... Was The Command Line
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