Re: GTK+-1.2.9 Released

["J. Ali Harlow" <gtk-list avrc city ac uk>]

On Fri, 02 Mar 2001, Owen Taylor wrote:
> Drazen Kacar <dave arsdigita com> writes:
> 
> > Owen Taylor wrote:
> > 
> > > Overview of Changes in GTK+ 1.2.9:
> > > ==================================
> > > 
> > > * Refuse to initialize GTK+ when setuid (http://www.gtk.org/setuid.html)
> > 
> > Is this just setuid or it includes setgid? There are games which are
> > setgid to group games for the sole purpose of having the ability to
> > manipulate high score lists which are not accessible to users. Those
> > programs will break if they can't run setgid any more.
> 
> It includes setgid, however, the check does not kick in if it
> the program has already dropped setgid privileges before initializing
> GTK+.
> 
> This is the way that GNOME games works, and there is a pretty
> clear argument that any setgid game game should work this way.

There may be a clear argument, but I have to say that it is unacceptable to me
for the GTK team to resort to such nannyisms. While it would not be impossible
for the Slash'EM development team to comply with this (and it would also have
some fringe benefits) it would take a huge amount of work - we would have to
change the graphical interfaces to the game into seperate processes and
implement a protocol for communicating with the game core via pipes. It is
quite ridiculus for the GTK team to impose their priorities on us in this way.

Please provide a mechanism for applications to defeat this check or I will
have to resort to subverting the getresuid() & getresgid() functions to lie to
GTK. Should you block this we will simply have to drop support for GTK from
Slash'EM (and tell our users why) until we can justify the time required to
meet with your requirements.

Annoyed of London.

-- 
Ali Harlow                              Email: ali avrc city ac uk
Research programmer                     Tel:   (020) 7477 8000 X 4348
Applied Vision Research Centre          Intl: +44 20 7477 8000 X 4348
City University                         Fax:   (020) 7505 5515
London                                  Intl: +44 20 7505 5515