[NTLUG:Discuss] su?

[Fred James]

I understand your concern about changing the password and then not being
able to change it back if you need to - that would require that you know
the original password, if any - have you tried loggin in (or su from an
"ordinary" user's account) as "www", just to see what happens?

If "www" is the owner, who/what is the group? - are you saying that
"Ordinary", with the primary group of say, "Ordinary", cannot be a
member of a secondary group, say what ever is the primary group of
"www"?  Or are you saying that "www"'s primary group doesn't have
sufficient privileges to accomplish your desired result?


Lance Simmons wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Jul 12, 2001 at 06:29:33PM -0500, Aaron Goldblatt wrote:
> >
> > They don't need a password, as you describe, because the change in ownership
> > is being done by a process running as root ... so no permissions need apply.
> > THAT is the danger of running things as root, and why you should avoid doing
> > so anywhere you can.
> 
> Let me give some more detail and see if that changes things:
> there are a lot of people who use FrontPage on their Windows
> desktops to create and edit files on the machine I'm asking
> about. The files are all owned by www.
> 
> Adding the user in question to the www group doesn't work
> (already tried it), because the web server will not serve a file
> unless it is _owned_ by www.
> 
> I want this person to be able to use unix-based tools (bypassing
> FrontPage to edit the files directly) to edit and maintain files
> on that webserver, while still allowing lots of other people to
> continue to use FrontPage. In order for him to do that, the
> files, once edited, must be owned by www.
> 
> If I change the password for www, won't that mess up all the
> people who are using FrontPage remotely to edit and save files?
> I guess to answer this I'd need to know more about how FrontPage
> extensions work on the webserver...
> 
> I'm just afraid that if I change the password for www, that will make
> FrontPage no longer work for lots of people, since _they_ will
> no longer be able (using FrontPage) to save files as www. I'm
> starting to think the answer to my question turns on the details
> of how FrontPage server extensions work. Does anyone know
> off-hand?
> 
> Lance Simmons
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