From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 571 invoked from network); 12 Dec 1996 14:02:46 -0000 Received: from euclid.skiles.gatech.edu (list@130.207.146.50) by coral.primenet.com.au with SMTP; 12 Dec 1996 14:02:46 -0000 Received: (from list@localhost) by euclid.skiles.gatech.edu (8.7.3/8.7.3) id IAA03157; Thu, 12 Dec 1996 08:54:54 -0500 (EST) Resent-Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 08:44:21 -0500 (EST) From: Zoltan Hidvegi Message-Id: <199612121344.OAA10133@bolyai.cs.elte.hu> Subject: Re: newgrp In-Reply-To: <199612121017.LAA09533@sgi.ifh.de> from Peter Stephenson at "Dec 12, 96 11:17:26 am" To: pws@ifh.de (Peter Stephenson) Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 14:44:49 +0100 (MET) Cc: chamont@polhp3.in2p3.fr, zsh-users@math.gatech.edu Organization: Dept. of Comp. Sci., Eotvos University, Budapest, Hungary Phone: (36 1)2669833 ext: 2667, home phone: (36 1) 2752368 X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL27 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Resent-Message-ID: <"BNJ_e2.0.yk.qm0io"@euclid> Resent-From: zsh-users@math.gatech.edu X-Mailing-List: archive/latest/550 X-Loop: zsh-users@math.gatech.edu X-Loop: zsh-workers@math.gatech.edu Precedence: list Resent-Sender: zsh-workers-request@math.gatech.edu Peter Stephenson wrote: > > Wether with the above function, or with the alias proposed in the FAQ, > > I always finally receive the message "zsh: newgrp not found", > > since there is no newgrp command available. > > aha --- most systems have an external command newgrp available which > seems to be missing there. zsh does have some mechanism for changing > the group by altering $GID, but the way it's set up it's only usable by > the superuser, as far as I can tell. That's because on Unix systems superuser privileges are required to change the primary group id. There is nothing in zsh which would prevent changing the GID parameter. If it fails it fails because the OS refused change it. Of course some trickery with chgrp and setgid might also help but on secure systems normal users have no write access to suid mounted filesystems. Also secure systems does not use HP, or if ther use, they definitely do not keep suid newgrp since a root exploit was posted recently to bugtraq using HP's newgrp (where you can find one or two HP root exploits every week so if you subscribe it will not be difficult to install the missing newgrp on your machine). Zoltan