site_archiver@lists.apple.com Delivered-To: darwin-dev@lists.apple.com User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040910 Bill On Dec 13, 2004, at 22:08, Justin Walker wrote: On Dec 13, 2004, at 21:45, James Berry wrote: On Dec 13, 2004, at 9:24 PM, Justin Walker wrote: [snip] Well, well, well, .... [snip] Regards, _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Darwin-dev mailing list (Darwin-dev@lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/darwin-dev/site_archiver%40lists.appl... All this is very interesting, guys, but a bit academic. After all, as I pointed out in my original question, Apple provides "sudo", which does essentially the same thing, cleanly -- and *IS* supported. In fact, not only does "sudo" work in shell scripts, it works (indirectly) in AppleScripts. It actually works BETTER in AppleScripts than directly in a shell, because it skips the password prompt if you are already logged in as a user with admin privileges. But what I'm really looking for is a simple "property list"-oriented way of doing this. I have a strong suspicion something like that exists -- not a Java property, something external to Java. In the "CF" series of keys, perhaps ... Yes, I have considered changing the port from well-known 80 to the private or reserved range. But I'm reluctant to do so, for the following reasons (none of which are really persuasive, I admit): 1. Apple lets users run Apache on their Macs, though few non-geek end-users do so. So why not my app, too? 2. My app has been available for some time on the dominant monopolist's OS, and it runs fine there without any privileges (even on XP SP2). 3. If I change the port number, I'll have to make it configurable, which is a real PITA (not that I'm lazy, mind you). Of course, if one of my users ever DOES want to run both Apache and my app on the same machine, at least ONE of us will have to be re-configured ... 4. It's actually rather convenient for my built-in Web server to be "standard", as it has other uses besides the master/remote interface. For instance, users (and I) can check my product's "log files" from their Web browsers on the remote machines. (Yes, I know you can specify a non-standard port in a URL, but I said this was a "convenience" issue.) As for letting the Java VM run in su mode the whole time my app is running (and it's a LONG running app, controls the playing of music on external CD changers and could runs for days or weeks) -- THAT doesn't worry me. The Java VM is about the LAST program in the world that I would consider to be a "security risk". And it's only MY instance of the Java VM that is privileged, not anybody else's. Justin Walker wrote: On Dec 13, 2004, at 21:11, James Berry wrote: Most systems will not permit shell scripts to execute 'setuid'. Works for me... (TM). (Note the euid...) It'll take me a while to figure this one out. Seems that bash and sh have somewhat different behaviors: Whilst I mull this over, I have reported it as bug #3919279. Seems like a problem to me, but perhaps there's an explanation... Justin This email sent to site_archiver@lists.apple.com