cygwin mentors? Was: bash and the suid bit

[Richard Troy]

> First of all, it's not bash but the OS (here Cygwin) which would
> have to care for the suid bit.

-smile-

> Second, the suid bit is available with ntsec on NTFS file systems
> but for now it's *only* available as a flag.  It has no effect!

Yes! I have learned this! And I am sad because of it.

> The implementation of suid under Win32 requires a running daemon
> with special permissions (running under SYSTEM account, that is)
> which can start a process under a different user account on behalf
> of the calling process.  The daemon already exists but the suid
> functionality isn't implemented yet.  It requires a person with
> a lot of time, actually...

Yes, I was afraid of that. -frown-

Perhaps this seems a silly place to say so, but I'm very impressed with
the work I've seen in CYGWIN, and in the open community and GNU in
general. In researching this SUID problem, I spent six or eight hours
yesterday reading all the related posts from the archive, and I noticed
how there's a lot of really good work - the internals discussions have
been well written and there are a few of you, like you, Corinna, who are
outstanding contributors... And, I have been wondering how I might
contribute too, being as over- worked and as busy as I am. However, I
_really_ need this - or some solution - working in this environment, so it
seems we have a case of converging needs. I think It makes more sense for
me to help out with suid than it does for me to write a one-off.

... After thinking it over for a bit...

I'm willing to give it a go if someone can mentor me along. My
apprenticeship resume: I started hacking in '77 at the tender age of 14,
so by now I've got a lot of experience. I once wrote a complete real-time,
multi-tasking operating system by myself which is in use today controlling
pipelines and oil refineries, and I used to be one of the top VAX/VMS
internals people at DEC, so this internals experience must be of some use
here, especially since NT/W2k is based on VMS. If someone were to work
with me, point me at the juicy stuff so I don't have to hunt so much, I
can probably commit to this project. Otherwise, I'm concerned it'll take
me too long to ramp up.

Anyone want to be a mentor?

Regards,
Richard

-- 
Richard Troy, Chief Scientist
Science Tools Corporation
rtroy@ScienceTools.com, 510-567-9957, http://ScienceTools.com/




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