Given that setuid is a Bad Thing for scripts, what is the general consensus here on running a Python script via 'sudo' to give it root system access? Is this reasonably secure, or am I still asking for trouble?
TIA,
The value of "sudo" is that everyone must authenticate as themselves, and sudo logs all activity. Therefore the system administrators can partition responsibility and know from the logs exactly who did what.
The risks involved with setuid scripts involve the exploitation of race conditions within the kernel, IIRC, and since the root permissions are established by sudo for the invoking process, I believe sudo would eliminate the risks involved (because the setuid bit would no longer be used on the script).
regards Steve -- Meet the Python developers and your c.l.py favorites March 23-25 Come to PyCon DC 2005 http://www.pycon.org/ Steve Holden http://www.holdenweb.com/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
