How do you pass authentication on the command line?

[Alex Rice]

On Feb 6, 2004, at 12:50 AM, Dave Cragg wrote:

> Not answering your question exactly, but couldn't you have the CGI 
> script do a chmod on the file with shell just after it saves it. This 
> won't need sudo as the CGI runs as the owner of the file and can 
> change permissions. I just tested here and it worked.

Actually in many CGI setups, a CGI script runs as "nobody"  or "www" or 
whatever user the httpd process is running as, regardless of who owns 
the script files. According to the Apache docs: "Normally, when a CGI 
or SSI program executes, it  runs as the same user who is running the 
web server."

suExec is a feature that cause CGI scripts to run as a different user.
See <http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/suexec.html>

Ken- for your problem, I think you should aim for creating the file 
with the correct ownership in the first place, not trying to pass 
permissions to a chown command.

I think suExec would be the best solution for you, then all of user 
"ken"'s scripts will be running as "ken" not as "www".

Alternatively you may be able to use a suid script:

# as user "ken"
chmod a+x some-script.mc
chmod +s some-script.mc

Now some-script.mc should run as "ken", even if the web server is 
running the script as the user "www".

--
Alex Rice | Mindlube Software | http://mindlube.com