On Tue, 13 Jul 1999, John Aldrich wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Jul 1999, you wrote:
>
> >
> > there isn't a single difference between su - and loging in as root (ok one
> > the utmp entry, but that has nothing todo with anything major)
> >
> Well, MY experience has been that there are some
> applications that can ONLY be run as "root." Editing system
> files appears to be one of those functions. I may not know
> much about theory and all that, but I *do* know that in the
> past when I've tried to run system commands as an SU-ed
> user, it wouldn't let me. *shrug*
>
> --
> John Aldrich
> COL Tech Support
> =======================================
> Chattanooga Online Internet
> 423-267-8867
>
For a program to run as root and not when su - root, it would have to
step thru parent pid's looking specificly for su (it could test the parent
pids uid, they all eventualy lead to root), which is posible but ugly.
As for editing system files, I am quite certain the filesystem drivers do
not check for su as a parent pid, so when editing files if your root or su
- root it will write the file. So if you do find a program that does this
let me know i'd like a look at it.
