Subject: running as root?

From: Karsten Ballueder <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1999 12:37:34 +0100 (BST)

I found that our mail client using c-client lib would not
function if run as root as it wouldn't get access to its
mailfolders etc.

Is there any simple way around this? Is there a reason
behind this, or is it just broken uid handling?

I'd like to get this to work somehow. There are a lot of
people wanting to run the client as root (which IMHO is bad,
but they don't ask me for my opinion).

--
 Karsten Ballüder  http://Ballueder.home.dhs.org/  mailto:[email-masked]
 Physics Department, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS, Scotland
                     Tel. +44-(0)-131-4513068  Fax. +44-(0)-131-4513136
            "In a world without fences, who needs Gates?"  

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From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1999 10:28:21 -0700 (PDT)

> function if run as root as it wouldn't get access to its

This is a feature.  User id 0 is an internal flag in the servers to mean "not
logged in".  c-client will not initialize its environment for user id 0 (since
environment initialization is a one-time operation).  You may be able to get
some things to work after a fashion, but that's it.

I am not going to change this.  This is a basic security issue.  If anything,
I will make it even less possible to use c-client under user id 0.

People who want to run mail clients as root need to be taught not to do so.