🚀 go-pugleaf

>> The first time I hears of the SUID I thought "what a nifty general
>> way to do JACCT"...
>
>The Kronos operating system for the CDC 6000 also had things similar to
>the SUID bit. An system command could have various special "entry points"
>that gave them special priviledges even when run by ordinary users. ...
>
>As far as I can see, the only innovation in UNIX SUID stuff is that the
>priviledges inherited can be those of any user, not just some "super user",
>as determined by file ownership. Personally, I don't this this ought to be 
>enough to justify a patent.

Lots of people have given examples of things that other systems did that
are subsumed by the set-uid bit.  The examples vary fairly widely,
but they seem to have a common thread:  There have been ways to do
priveliged functions in the past, so what's so new about set-uid?

It seems to me that what's new is the complete generalization of privilege.
In the Kronos example, above, note that a "system command could have...".
This allows the (necessarily) privileged system maintainers to designate
a privileged program.  Set-uid allows *any* user to say "during the
execution of this program, which *I* have so designated, you may have
*my* permissions."

Is there a feature elsewhere that allows this?

-- 
Ed Gould                    mt Xinu, 2560 Ninth St., Berkeley, CA  94710  USA
{ucbvax,decvax}!mtxinu!ed   +1 415 644 0146

"A man of quality is not threatened by a woman of equality."