GSoC 2008 dma enhancements

Steve O'Hara-Smith steve at sohara.org
Tue Jun 3 04:03:23 PDT 2008


On Tue, 3 Jun 2008 00:27:10 +0200
"Max Lindner" <gisanka at googlemail.com> wrote:

> In order to read a users .forward file, the dma-process must be run as
> root, so it must be set setuid root. This would solve the problem
> which I read at the mailinglist the last week, where it was not
> possible to write a mail from non-root to non-root ootb.

	There was an earlier thread (subject line: "dma user config" around
early February) in which Matt was advocating using a daemon started by root
(rather than setuid) which takes care of the local delivery by forking and
switching to the recipient user. The main point being that a setuid process
is a mechanism by which privileges are increased in an environment
under control of the user while a root started process is one that reduces
privileges and is in an environment which can only be controlled by root.

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