Gilbert, Joseph wrote:
There are two other standard ways to have scripts run with root privileges. 1) For automated tasks, schedule it in root's crontab. 'man crontab' for more info 2) Use setuid for scripts or programs that are to be run by users who need root perms to perform a specific task programmed into that script. You need to think about security on this one though. See 'man setuid' and 'man chmod' for more info.
setuid has long been disabled for scripts, because an attacker could do something like this:
ln setuid-script foo; (./foo &); ln -f evil-script foo
If the timing was just right the kernel would read the setuid bit, owner
and script interpreter from setuid-script but the interpreter would read
evil-script. This problem could be avoided if the kernel would pass the
script to the interpreter using a file descriptor instead of an
argument, but that's not backward-compatible.
What one can do is to write a specific wrapper for the script in some language that can be compiled to executable code, and make that setuid. It's possible to write a generic wrapper in C and use preprocessor macros to substitute the name of the specific script when compiling it. The script and its directory should be appropriately protected so that only the owner can modify or replace it.
Ben.