X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 08:04:30 -0500 (EST) From: Igor Peshansky Reply-To: cygwin@cygwin.com To: cygwin@cygwin.com Subject: Re: 'su' no longer working? In-Reply-To: <20060109125839.GD32312@calimero.vinschen.de> Message-ID: References: <43BDF429.5050206@byu.net> <20060109125839.GD32312@calimero.vinschen.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help@cygwin.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner@cygwin.com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin@cygwin.com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin@cygwin.com On Mon, 9 Jan 2006, Corinna Vinschen wrote: > On Jan 6 00:03, Igor Peshansky wrote: > > On Thu, 5 Jan 2006, Eric Blake wrote: > > > According to Igor Peshansky on 1/5/2006 3:37 PM: > > > > 'su' used to be an executable that worked correctly from a > > > > SYSTEM-owned shell, but now it's a shell script that simply prints > > > > a "not supported" message. Is it possible to resurrect the old > > > > "su" executable (that perhaps prints the same message if run from > > > > a non-SYSTEM account)? > > > > > > Coreutils certainly builds an su executable, but the cygwin distro of su > > > has been a script since at least 5.2.1 when Corinna was the maintainer; I > > > only enhanced the script to be a little more useful. > > > > Right. In fact, Googling for "sysbash" unearthed this message: > > (though Corinna > > did miss the one use for "su" that I mention below -- that is, > > switching user context without a password if unable to start a > > service). > > You know the problem. We had a good number of reports along the lines > of "su is broken". That's the reason I replaced su with that script. > > It's Eric's choice, but I wouldn't like to see su return to life without > some Windows specific changes. If su fails to switch user context, then > it should print a WIndows specific message which points to the fact that > Administrator users don't have permissions to change user context by > default, plus basically the text printed by the current su script. > Otherwise the usual questions as above will crop up on this list again. Right, that's pretty much what I was asking for above. Eric, if it helps, I can look into submitting the patch later this week, though I haven't looked at the coreutils code in a while, so it might take some time to understand the specifics. Igor -- http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/ |\ _,,,---,,_ pechtcha@cs.nyu.edu | igor@watson.ibm.com ZZZzz /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ Igor Peshansky, Ph.D. (name changed!) |,4- ) )-,_. ,\ ( `'-' old name: Igor Pechtchanski '---''(_/--' `-'\_) fL a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-. Meow! "Las! je suis sot... -Mais non, tu ne l'es pas, puisque tu t'en rends compte." "But no -- you are no fool; you call yourself a fool, there's proof enough in that!" -- Rostand, "Cyrano de Bergerac" -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/