Subject: We Resrict users to /usr/local/rbin - How can 'spell' work?

From: [email-masked] (Andrew P. Dinsdale)
Date: 25 May 1995 20:54:01 GMT

Hi

We have a restricted, not chroot I *must* add, environment where users
can only execute programs in /usr/local/rbin.  This includes Pine, Lynx
their menus, cp, rm etc etc.  Users execute Pine from a menu - so typing
a number spawns /usr/local/rbin/pine.  Everything works like a charm
except for spell (^T).  We have tried moving /usr/bin/spell into
/usr/local/rbin (as well as all the programs used by spell) but still
no cigar.  When ^T is invoked Pine simply echoes back "Done Checking
Spelling" with no corrections made.  When I run Pine in a command tool I
see "sh: /usr/bin/spell: restricted" - this does not surprise me as we
are not giving users access to /usr/bin!!!!

Now, what I need is some good advice on how to make Pine look for 'spell'
in the users path NOT by looking for /usr/bin/spell.  Has anyone hacked
the source successfully (we tried that too) ?? Or can any Pine developers
who read this group explain where I would change the code.

Please help.

Andrew Dinsdale
--

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From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 16:54:25 -0700 (PDT)

> who read this group explain where I would change the code.

Before your menu calls Pine, have it set the SPELL environment variable to
/usr/local/rbin/spell.

|\ |  |\/|  David L. Miller    [email-masked]  (206) 685-6240
|/ |_ |  |  Software Engineer, Pine Development Team   (206) 685-4045 (FAX)
University of Washington, Networks & Distributed Computing, JE-20
4545 15th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98105, USA