SIMH & root

[David Holland]

On Thu, 2 Sep 2004, Patrick Finnegan wrote:

<snip>

> 
> Under the 2.6 linux kernel, you should be able to use capabilities to 
> effect the same result, without opening up the entire "running a 
> process as root" bag of worms.  Just don't ask me how, as I've never 
> used them yet, I just know that they are (should be) there.

Judging by the includes, it looks like there's a CAP_NET_RAW that'll allow a 
process to access PACKET sockets.    However, as far as I can tell, you 
still have to be root to initialize them, and you still end up dropping
your root privileges. 

They're also a little Linux specific for SIMH (imho) setuid(), setgid(), and
chroot() exist on most Unix's I know of.  (Yes, alegedly capabilities are a 
POSIX draft, but cap_init() & friends don't exist on Solaris, nor HPUX)

I suppose the one advantage to capabilities would be that you could retain
your ability to attach/detach network devices once you've dropped your root
privileges. 

The one Linux specific bit of code I _DO_ intend to take a stab at is getting
rid of the promiscuous mode requirement.  I figure adding a ethernet
address to the mac filter list w/ a promiscuous mode fallback is at least
slightly better. 

But FWIW, I'll tidy up this patch and ship it off to Bob Supnik here in a few.. 

David

> 
> Pat
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