On Sat, 16 Aug 2008, Andrea wrote:

> Il 15/08/2008 alle 20:00, Jon Peatfield ha scritto:
>
>> On Fri, 15 Aug 2008, Brett Viren wrote:
> [...]
>>> So the set-gid utmp lets xterm write to wtmp.  I can't conceive of
>>> why TUV doesn't do this as well.
>>
>> On sl4x because xterm is linked against libutempter it doesn't need to
>> be setuid/setgid, that piece of code has a little setgid helper.
> [...]
>> Having said that on sl5x xterm IS setgid but - utempter not utmp!
> [...]
>> Obviously the utempter code was changed so only those in the utempter
>> group can use it, presumably as a security measure.
>
>
> So, if I understand correctly, the only way to set things straight would
> be to make wtmp world-writeable?

No. There are *lots* of ways of making things straight.
The problem is getting every developer to agree which way.

In principal xterm doesn't even need to do this. Either the window manager 
or session manager does it once before spawning any terms which are need 
ed, or xterm is run from a shell which already has, or has inherited a
registered session. You don't really want who to show you logged
in fifteen times just because you logged in and opened 15 xterms.

-- 
Dr. Andrew C. Aitchison		Computer Officer, DPMMS, Cambridge
[log in to unmask]	http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~werdna