Re: runuser(1) and su(1) -g/-G

[Dave Reisner <d@falconindy.com>]

On Wed, Sep 05, 2012 at 08:38:22AM -0400, Dave Reisner wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 04, 2012 at 05:18:43PM +0200, Karel Zak wrote:
> > 
> >  Hi,
> > 
> > I did some changes to the su(1):
> > 
> >   - add --group= option to specify the primary group
> >   - add --supp-group= option to specify a supplemental group
> > 
> > the both options are based on Fedora runuser(1) patch and it's
> > available for root only (non-root cannot specify any groups).
> > 
> > 
> > I have also added new command runuser(1) -- it's completely based on
> > su(1) code. The difference is that runuser does not ask for password,
> > has to be executed by root and it uses different PAM configuration
> > (/etc/pam.d/runuser[-l]).
> > 
> > The changes should be available in v2.23 (or easily backported to
> > 2.22, I'll do that for Fedora).
> > 
> > See master branch and "git whatchanged login-utils/".
> > 
> >     Karel
> > 
> 
> Hi Karel,
> 
> I think we're missing out on an opportunity with runuser. su insists on
> starting a shell which, among other subtle problems, leads to the
> largeer problem of quoting and escaping the command passed to the -c
> flag. I think we should do something like this:
> 
> - separate out argument parsing to runuser and su
> - remove most of the flags from runuser (-f, -c, -l, -, -s), add a -u
>   flag (optional, for user)
> - create a single common entry point for creating a session
> - separate out the run command logic
> 
> With a name like runuser, I would expect that its purpose would be to
> simply run commands (and not necessarily get a shell for a user, as is
> done with su). runuser could take non-option arguments as argv for the
> new command so that we'd have examples like this:
> 
>   runuser -u notroot vi /etc/fstab
>   runuser notroot foocmd embedded '"quotes"'
>   runuser -u notroot foocmd has args "with spaces" sometimes
> 
> If you still desperately want to abuse the command to create a shell for
> a user, then you just do that:
> 
>   runuser -u notroot -- /bin/sh -
> 
> I can't make any guarantees that I'll be able to offers patches for this
> myself, but I'll definitely be taking a look if I have some free time.
> Just thought I'd bring up the idea, since it's always been a pet peeve
> of mine to fix if ever there were an opportunity for a mulligan on su
> (and this is it!).
> 
> Cheers,
> Dave

Hrmm... I had no idea that runuser was an existing command in the RedHat
world, which makes my idea of a "mulligan" less feasible. Boo.