Re: Must pppd be run by root?
On Sun, 12 May 1996, Rob Browning wrote:
> >>>>> "R" == Richard Kettlewell <richard@elmail.co.uk> writes:
>
> R> pppd has to do various messing around creating network interfaces
> R> and so on, so running it as (not root) is a bit of a non-starter.
> R> Why do you want it to be able to run it not as root?
two words:
DIAL-IN USERS
> Right, pppd really needs to be run as root. You don't want just any
> user killing your net connection. If you want to let a selected set
> of users bring the net connection up and down, check out sudo. It's
> designed for this.
This permissions problem just cost me over $44 (australian dollars).
I upgraded pppd on the dialin machine at work on Friday night. Forgot to
change the permissions on pppd to make it owned by root.ppp, perms=1750.
When the line dropped out from my home machine to my work machine at 5am
the next morning, my home system automatically dialed in to re-establish
the link. Logged in OK, ran pppd. The connection dropped again because
it didn't have the right perms. My system then proceeded to call every
2 minutes, until I got home and stopped it at about 11am.
A local call here in Australia costs 25 cents.
An expensive mistake.
The postinst for ppp package SHOULD ask if permissions on /usr/sbin/pppd
should be changed.
Craig
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