🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <ntomczak.725563464@vega> ntomczak@vega.math.ualberta.ca (N  
Tomczak-Jaegermann) writes:
> 
> There seems to be a bug in the latest version of Kermit, 5A(188),
> 23 Nov 92, from columbia.edu.  At least as far as NeXT is concerned.
> When you will try to open a new file, either by specifying a name for a
> received file different from an automatic default or by using an
> explicit 'open' Kermit command then most likely you will get
> "Access denied" or an equivalent message.
> 
> The problem is that Kermit should be owned by uucp to get an access to
> communication ports and lock files and runs as "suid program" so you
> can use it from a regular user account (it will refuse to run if owned
> by a root).  For some reasons Kermit swaps internally real and
> effective id's ...


Here is a reply from Frank da Cruz.

Date: Tue, 5 Jan 93 9:31:47 EST
From: Frank da Cruz <fdc@watsun.cc.columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: FYI - Bug in Kermit5A(188) under 3.0 (with a patch)


The reason is that when you have a set-UID program, you want it to run with
the user's real ID when it is accessing ordinary files and creating forks, not
the set-UID.  The set-UID-ness in Kermit is only for creating the lockfile and
accessing the communication device (an artifact of a hideous design flaw of
UNIX that has haunted us forever, namely that access to serial devices like
communication ports is shared by default, rather than exclusive).  See the
installation instructions, ckuker.doc, for a fuller explanation.

> ... and this is causing 'access()' library function from
> NeXTSTEP 3.0 to fail when probing your directories. The following
> patch seems to make things OK (at least for me and so far :-)):
> 
Your patch is essentially correct.  I regard it as a workaround for a bug in
NeXT's implementation of access().  We discovered the same thing here last
week and issued approximately the same patch.  Updated sources and makefile
have been installed in kermit/b on watsun.cc.columbia.edu, and a bug report
was sent to NeXT.

- Frank


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