Re: make ping executable by normal users?

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On Thu, Jun 02, 2016 at 11:28:40PM +0100, Lisi Reisz wrote:

> So far as I can see, ping IS executable by normal users.  But then I have only 
> got Wheezy and Jessie.  Are you using Stretch or Sid??

This is not really new in stretch. You can experiment this funny
effect in jessie as well. Try this on a jessie system:

cd /bin
mv ping ping.old
cp ping.old ping

Then ping will no longer work for an ordinary user because it lost its
"capability", that you can see with getcap this way:

getcap ping.old
getcap ping

It's a funny effect because you will never see the difference by just
doing "ls -l".

This capability may be lost, for example, if you use rsync to copy the root
filesystem to another partition with rsync and forget to use -X option.