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Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2006 21:38:01 -0700
From: Eric Blake <ebb9 AT byu DOT net>
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Subject: Re: 'su' no longer working?
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According to Igor Peshansky on 1/5/2006 3:37 PM:
> Hi,
> 
> '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.  I'll see what I can
do about getting the executable built and running, but no promise on a
timeline; is there any easy run-time test as to whether the current user
is SYSTEM and should try to perform user switching, vs. normal users to
print a warning message that su is relatively useless under cygwin/Windows
semantics?  Also, be aware that there has been talk (but so far, no
action) on the bug-coreutils list about dropping su from coreutils
altogether, since there are other open source implementations of su
available in other projects, and since it is so hard to maintain in a
generic manner.

> 
> This was the only convenient command-line way I knew to test the behavior
> of passwordless user switching from a SYSTEM shell...  I would also be
> happy with alternative means for doing that.

I guess that means I will finally have to figure out how to set up my own
sysbash to also test this.  Meanwhile, if you download the cygwin
coreutils src tarball, the su executable IS built, just not installed.

> 
> Thanks,
> 	Igor
> P.S. Eric, sorry for the late notice -- when you announced that you made
> 'su' print out that message, i assumed this was the old executable that
> tested the context and printed the message...

- --
Life is short - so eat dessert first!

Eric Blake             ebb9 AT byu DOT net
volunteer cygwin coreutils maintainer
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