[Zope] supplemental group ids (Linux)

Kip Rugger kbr@pangea.ca
6 Sep 2000 11:05:51 -0500


>OK, something is not quite right here.
>On my unmodified zope, it is properly 'sandboxed'. Perhaps it is the use of
>the explicit '-u nobody'? I don't do that on
>my system, which causes Zope to run as nobody implicitly.
>
>(When started as root, unless told otherwise, zope will switch to nobody).
>
>Try running without the 'u nobody switch, and see what happens. Just out of
>curiousity.

No difference.

I think the point is that Zope does not make any initgroups(3) calls;
this will be a problem if the particular system needs it.

I have two such systems:

    Linux 2.2.16 + glibc-2.1.2
    NetBSD 1.4

Having reviewed the kernel and libc sources in both cases, I am convinced
that set*gid and {init,set,get}groups operate totally independently.

At minimum, initgroups is used by login/su to set the primary gid found
in /etc/passwd, plus any additional gids associated with the uid in
/etc/group, as supplemental gids.  Thus, even if there are no supplemental
gids in /etc/group, you still have the primary gid in the kernel's list
of supplementals.  So the primary gid occurs initially in 3 places:
the real and effective gids, and one of the supplemental gids.
You must get all 3; setgid for real and eff, initgroups for sup.
(Additionally in linux you have the `saved' gid and the fsgid, but
setgid will modify them.)

Under this hypothesis, my question is how could _your_ system work?
Why is it that you don't have the original primary gid lingering in
the supplemental list?