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Received: by minnie.vk1xwt.ampr.org with NNTP id AA6956 ; Fri, 15 Jan 93 10:40:23 EST Xref: sserve comp.unix.bsd:10059 comp.windows.x.i386unix:299 Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd,comp.windows.x.i386unix Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!linac!att!cbnewsi!cbnewsh!lzbuoy!billc From: billc@pegasus.ATT.COM (Bill Carpenter) Subject: Re: xfree86 only works for root? Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1993 14:30:00 GMT Message-ID: <1993Jan17.143000.28887@cbnewsh.cb.att.com> In-Reply-To: probreak@matt.ksu.ksu.edu's message of 13 Jan 1993 04:15:36 -0600 References: <MfIsYa600WBMM8XVtb@andrew.cmu.edu> <1j0q48INNmq1@matt.ksu.ksu.edu> Sender: news@cbnewsh.cb.att.com (NetNews Administrator) Nntp-Posting-Host: pegasus Lines: 35 > "xterm: Error 14, errno 13: Permission denied" chacon> Xterm should be installed set-uid. This is so it can grab chacon> the pty master/slave pair and chown them to you. Also, it chacon> allows for it to update /etc/utmp. I don't know anything about the PTY stuff, but the /etc/utmp part is definitely true. In any case, as Chacon suggests, this will fix it: chown root xterm chmod u+s xterm However, there are a couple of other options which my come in handy for those in places where it's less convenient to have yet annother setUid program. [1] On Suns and many other places, /etc/utmp is 0666 perms, so anyone can write into it. I don't know what the security implications are, but it cures this xterm problem. [2] There is an option for xterm to tell it to not bother trying to write in /etc/utmp. I think it's "-ut", but I don't have the man page handy. (On the other hand, my xterm isn't can't write into /etc/utmp and I don't use that option. Yet, my xterms run without complaining, so there may be something to that PTY stuff on your system after all.) Once you've fixed xterm, don't forget to also fix color_xterm and colour_xterm. You will also probably want to fix "xload" which wants to have sufficient permissions to read /dev/kmem (usually setGid something will be good enough there). -- Bill@attmail.com billc@pegasus.ATT.COM or (908) 576-2932 William_J_Carpenter@ATT.COM AT&T Bell Labs / AT&T EasyLink Services LZ 3C-207