Things that root can't do (Re: setuid (euid) ...)

Felix Lee flee at shire.cs.psu.edu
Wed Apr 5 12:47:32 AEST 1989


In article <1197 at auspex.UUCP>,
   guy at auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) writes:
>Yes, just keep running as "root", and you won't have to worry about any
>of this - if you're "root", you shouldn't have to bother with set-UID
>stuff at all, right? :-)

There are things normal users can do that root cannot, such as fail to
open a file :-)

One interesting thing that is harder to do as root is to kill all of a
user's processes:
	setuid(uid);
	kill(-1, sig);
which is useful in privileged-kill programs.

How about a definition of root by what root can't do?
--
Felix Lee	flee at shire.cs.psu.edu	*!psuvax1!shire!flee



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