Bug 71691

Summary:	traceroute should start as user root
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Public Beta	Reporter:	Taco Witte <info>
Component:	mtr	Assignee:	Phil Knirsch <pknirsch>
Status:	CLOSED RAWHIDE	QA Contact:	Mike McLean <mikem>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	limbo	CC:	pekkas, rvokal
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2002-08-19 11:41:17 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Taco Witte 2002-08-16 18:44:40 UTC

Description of Problem:
Traceroute cannot be run as normal user, and currently simply doesn't do
anything (when run from terminal, it produces an error message telling it cannot
be run as non-root).
It should ask for the root password, so that it can run as root.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
Limbo2, no upgrade.

How Reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Try running Traceroute from "All Applications | Internet"

Actual Results:
Nothing. When run from a terminal:
-----------
mtr: Unable to get raw socket.  (Executable not suid?)
-----------
(Making the executable suid root is a *bad* suggestion; it doesn't even work!)

Expected Results:
Asking root password, and afterwards running as root.

Additional Information:
None that I know

Comment 1 Pekka Savola 2002-08-19 11:09:27 UTC

Umm, isn't this an mtr problem?  Changing component.

Anyway, running a program as root is much worse IMO than setting it setuid.  If
setuid doesn't work, it should be fixed.

Comment 2 Taco Witte 2002-08-19 11:24:57 UTC

I agree that setuid is safer than running things as root, but in this case it's
better. This is the result of running xmtr as normal user, with the executable
set as setuid:

-----------------------------------
Gtk-WARNING **: This process is currently running setuid or setgid.
This is not a supported use of GTK+. You must create a helper
program instead. For further details, see:

    http://www.gtk.org/setuid.html

Refusing to initialize GTK+.
------------------------------------

I think it's simply a little mistake that it doesn't ask for the root password,
like configuration programs do.

Comment 3 Phil Knirsch 2002-08-19 11:33:25 UTC

Mtr has as history for exploits, thats why is has never been setuid in our
distribution and why will stay like that.

Anyone is free to setuid the binary himself, but we can't and won't do it by
default in our distribution.

A general rule for our distro is to have as little setuid binaries as possible,
and mtr just doesn't meet the code quality required to be setuid.

What i thought we already had done was to make xmtr consolehelper aware, but
from what i see it doesn't look like it. I'll fix that, that should be the best
of both worlds and thats what we generally do for x11 apps that require root
privileges.

Read ya, Phil

Comment 4 Taco Witte 2002-08-19 11:41:13 UTC

Thanks

Comment 5 Phil Knirsch 2002-08-19 12:12:01 UTC

OK, fixed in latest rawhide version mtr-0.49-7

Read ya, Phil