*BSD News Article 91068


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From: lowtek@best.com (Spencer Low)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Keyboard Lockup; xload
Date: 14 Mar 1997 20:37:33 GMT
Organization: LowTek Creations <http://www.lowtek.com/>
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References: <5g7frp$221@nntp1.ba.best.com> <slrn5iibie.qdc.ripley@nortobor.nostromo.in-berlin.de>
Reply-To: spencer@lowtek.com (Spencer Low)
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H. Eckert (ripley@nostromo.in-berlin.de) wrote:
> lowtek@best.com (Spencer Low):
> > In another note, the standard installation of the X Windows stuff with
> > FreeBSD 2.1.6 installed xload, but it was not set-g-id in the kmem
> > group. Is this a major security risk (for xload to be set-g-id to
> > kmem), or is this just an oversight of the FreeBSD installation?

> I'd say it is intended that way.  On my 2.1.0 it isn't sgid either
> and working fine.  Apparently the getloadavg(3) routine allows a cleanly
> non-privilidged access to the information.  The main reason for setting
> xload to sgid kmem is to retrieve the load information from kernel
> structures anyway, so you don't need to do that if you can get the
> data from an official source.

Thanks for the reply. On my 2.1.6 system, it wasn't sgid and it didn't
work at all (spouted out error messages about not being able to access
/dev/kmem). Apparently there's differences between the different
distributions of FreeBSD...

Thanks again,

Spencer
--
Spencer Low <spencer@lowtek.com>
LowTek Creations <http://www.lowtek.com/>