[Dovecot] Root uid

Curtis Maloney cmaloney at cardgate.net
Thu Apr 28 04:23:47 EEST 2005


Chris L. Franklin wrote:
>> Honestly, why do you want it to be root?  It's NOT a good idea, even 
>> though Dovecot has so far shown to be very secure.
> 
> 
> I disagree, strongly

To which statement?  That using root is not a good idea, or that Dovecot has 
shown to be secure?

>> I thought the only thing stopping this (apart from good sense) is the 
>> minimum UID setting in the config file?
> 
> Nope it's in the source to disallow it

Oh, ok.  Well, I'm not surprised.  It's generally considered a bad practice.

> PS. On the good sense part, It's way I use SELinux. I could just hand 
> out root's login on my box and not worry.
> 

 From what I understand, SELinux is a special case.  What I've been told of it, 
it's an interesting idea, with much merit.  I don't know enough to say either 
way.  Maybe I'll take a closer look after I've finished delving into Sun's RBAC.

As for the code changes, from memory the UID checking stuff is all in the one 
place ( in 0.99.14 it seems to be src/lib/restrict-access.c ).  I'm not sure 
about 1.0... we'll move to that when we can have custom flags :)

--
Curtis



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