Bug 69510 – xterm suid

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description Max Loparev 2004-10-30 08:50:31 UTC]

Why xterm has suid bit set? Is it only for writing to utmp? I thought that utmp group exists exactly for such purposes.

chown root:utmp & chmod u-s & chmod g+s

[Comment 1 Thomas Dickey 2004-11-07 12:55:19 UTC]

suid would be used for pre-Unix98 ptys.
sgid is as noted, needed for utmp (unless some
intermediary as utempter was used).

[Comment 2 Donnie Berkholz (RETIRED) 2004-11-07 15:30:02 UTC]

donnie@supernova ~ $ ls -l `which xterm`
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 277808 Oct 27 09:54 /usr/bin/xterm


Which X version and implementation do you have installed? Also, if you have xterm as a separate package, which version?

[Comment 3 Max Loparev 2004-11-08 05:05:07 UTC]

>Which X version and implementation do you have installed? Also, if you have xterm >as a separate package, which version?
i have the xterm-196 installed.
After digging a little deeper in the problem, I found that install script trying to copy permissions from already installed /usr/bin/xterm.

/bin/sh ./sinstall.sh "/bin/install -c" xterm  /usr/bin/xterm /var/tmp/portage/xterm-196/image//usr/bin/`echo xterm|  sed 's/$//'|sed 's,x,x,'|sed 's/$//'`
checking for presumed installation-mode
... if "/usr/bin/xterm" is null, try the ls -g option
... if "/usr/bin/xterm" is null, we do not look for group
... if we have date in proper columns (Ноя 8 15:37), "" is null
... derived user "root", group "utmp" of previously-installed xterm
... see if mode "-rwx--s--x" has s-bit set
... installing xterm as user "root", group "root"
/bin/install -c -m 2711  -g utmp xterm /var/tmp/portage/xterm-196/image//usr/bin/xterm

Now i can't say is this good or bad, but seems that some previous package of X has this permissons installed on xterm.

Btw, without suid bit set, I can't open /dev/console under 2.6.9 kernel, xterm -C reported:
xterm: cannot open console: Operation not permitted
and console is crw-------  1 max tty 5, 1 Ноя  8 16:00 /dev/console
do i need to open a new bug?

[Comment 4 Max Loparev 2004-11-08 06:00:01 UTC]

just found who is responsible for the last issue.
it is tioccons-security.patch from Olaf Dabrunz <od at suse.de>, appeared in ac5 and mm patchsets

[Comment 5 Donnie Berkholz (RETIRED) 2004-11-08 08:41:53 UTC]

I've added 196-r1 for this. Thanks for the report!