[fetchmail-users] Re: WARNING: Running as root is discouraged.

[Michelle K. <lin...@fr...>]

Am 2005-11-17 11:02:01, schrieb Matthias Andree:
> Thomas Wolff schrieb am 2005-11-11:
> 
> > There is this new warning "WARNING: Running as root is discouraged." 
> > which is somehow disturbing.
> 
> Yes, and that is deliberate.
> 
> Networking clients should never run with root privileges, and fetchmail
> is no exception. Fetchmail does not need root privileges to forward
> mail, the only conceivable scenario where it needs root privileges is
> one where it calls an MDA for a different user.

If fetchmail can not started by the $USER and it run global from a
script for all $USERS with "mda /usr/bin/procmail -d %T" what must
I change that it continue to work

To get a clue:

My fetchmail wraper generates logs like

2005-09-12 12:45:01 : Processing started...
2005-09-12 12:45:02 :  amina.herdam         default         (2: Socket)
2005-09-12 12:45:13 :  athina.russel        default         (1: No mail)
2005-09-12 12:45:14 :  ccenter              default         (1: No mail)
2005-09-12 12:45:18 :  dgse                 default         (1: No mail)
2005-09-12 12:45:20 :  diana.seitz          default         (1: No mail)
2005-09-12 12:45:21 :  dst                  default         (1: No mail)
2005-09-12 12:45:23 :  farahnaz.pahlavi     default         (1: No mail)
2005-09-12 12:45:24 :  fayah.dogan          default         (1: No mail)
2005-09-12 12:45:28 :  karima.kalaaji       default         (1: No mail)
2005-09-12 12:45:30 :  lydia.ackermann      default         (1: No mail)
2005-09-12 12:45:31 :  mehdi.serhane        default         (1: No mail)
2005-09-12 12:45:32 :  michelle.konzack     0_private       (1: No mail)
2005-09-12 12:45:46 :  michelle.konzack     1_tdnet         (0: Success)
2005-09-12 12:46:11 :  michelle.konzack     3_arabeyes      (1: No mail)
2005-09-12 12:46:12 :  michelle.konzack     4_bts           (1: No mail)
2005-09-12 12:46:15 :  michelle.konzack     5_postgresql    (1: No mail)
2005-09-12 12:46:16 :  michelle.konzack     6_php           (0: Success)
2005-09-12 12:46:24 :  michelle.konzack     7_linux         (0: Success)
2005-09-12 12:46:50 :  michelle.konzack     8_mail          (1: No mail)
2005-09-12 12:46:50 :  michelle.konzack     9_debian        (0: Success)
2005-09-12 12:54:34 :  michelle.konzack     A_misc          (11: DNS)
2005-09-12 12:55:30 :  michelle.konzack     B_wanadoo       (2: Socket)
2005-09-12 12:59:15 :  michelle.konzack     C_lugs          (11: DNS)
2005-09-12 13:00:11 :  michelle.konzack     D_sun           (11: DNS)
2005-09-12 13:01:07 :  michelle.konzack     F_tdautobuilder (2: Socket)
2005-09-12 13:02:59 :  mis                  default         (2: Socket)
2005-09-12 13:04:52 :  mos                  default         (11: DNS)
2005-09-12 13:05:48 :  noor.nurani          default         (11: DNS)
2005-09-12 13:06:45 :  omegasector          default         (11: DNS)
2005-09-12 13:07:43 :  pmc                  default         (11: DNS)
2005-09-12 13:08:39 :  sandrine.dario       default         (11: DNS)
2005-09-12 13:09:35 :  tamay.dogan          default         (2: Socket)
2005-09-12 13:13:20 :  zelie.domeracki      default         (11: DNS)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Availlable diskspace:
Filesystem           1M-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdj1                72287     45802     25751  65% /home-mail
========================================================================

Each $USER can have one or more fetchmailconfigs and now ?
There is only ssmtp on the system availlable which does not
support local delivery.

> > I thought fetchmail is also intended as a system installation 
> > for multi-user mail retrieval so it's actually a designed mode to 
> > run fetchmail as root (and the message seems to be unconditional, 

Right

> Refused. Please fix the way you work. This is not Windows, and sudo(1)
> works well for the few moments when you need more power than the regular
> user.  <http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/>

It can not fixed, if you need to fetch messages from cron
for all the $USER of a system.

> fetchmail is a tool for the end user who is usually untrained about
> systems administrations, putting up obstacles and annoyances while he
> works as root is the right thing to do.

But if the $ENDUSER can not run fetchmail because she/he
has no access and it is the system which get the messages ?

My system has only courier-imap-ssl, procmail and fetchmail
installed.

Greetings
Michelle

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