Re: Problems running Usermin

[Jamie C. <jca...@we...>]

Carlton Thomas wrote:

> On Thu, 10 Oct 2002, Jamie Cameron wrote:
> 
> 
>>That looks perfect to me, and in fact the same changes work on my
>>system without causing any problems. When you get the error message,
>>does anything useful appear in /var/usermin/miniserv.error ?
>>
>>
> 
> Hi Jamie,
> 
> I have made some progress, however, I have still not got it working
> properly as yet. Just thought I would update you on what I have found
> out so far.
> 
> In my last message I said that all appears to work OK when I comment
> out the lines which forces Usermin to change from root to the logged
> in user, but I was getting a script error with the lines uncommented.
> I have discovered the reason for this.
> 
> As I said before, the OS is BSDI 3.1. I installed Usermin while logged
> in to the root account. The default file creation privileges for root
> on the box is 600 (or 700 for executables) and owned by root. Now, when
> Usermin makes the transition from root to the specified user it can no
> longer read/execute any of the Perl scripts. To test this quickly, I
> simply changed the privileges on all the Usermin files to 755 and I no
> longer get the script error.


That's odd, because the usermin tar file has all files set to mode 755 or 644,

so you shouldn't need to change them again.

> However, that did not cure my problem completely. Usermin now seems to
> be behaving very strangely! Let me explain. I am doing all the tests
> using the mail module, trying to read uesr email. When I click on the
> Read Mail link, Usermin shows all the correct buttons, but there are
> a number of problems with the displayed page. These are:-
> 
> 1) The icon bar at the top is replaced with "User Email" in very large
> font.
> 
> 2) The preferences tab is replaced with ordinary text reading
> "preferences".
> 
> 3) The pull-down lists of mail folders shows every file in the user's
> home directory.
> 
> 4) The count of the number of messages in the inbox is correct, however,
> the list of messages are not being displayed.
> 
> Just a thought! In changing the privs to 755, have I incorrectly changed
> the priv of any setuid scripts that Usermin requires?


No, because none of them are setuid ..

However, it sounds like the problem is that the code cannot read the /etc/usermin

directory. Is that readable by normal users? Try setting it to mode 755 and seeing
if that makes a difference.
Oddly, this should be done by setup.sh for you anyway ..


> Finally, I am not sure whether I have hit a Perl problem or a BSDI 3.1
> problem, but, I have discovered something weird about the functions
> which are used to change from root to ordinary user.
> 
> 1) perl -e '($<, $>) = (1, 1)'
> 
>    runs OK and correctly sets the real and effective user
> 
> 2) perl -e '($(, $)) = (1, 1)'
> 
>    runs OK and correctly sets the real and effective group
> 
> 3) perl -e '$< = 1'
> 
>    fails with the error "setruid() not implemented at -e line 1"
> 
> 4) perl -e '$( = 1'
> 
>    fails with the error "setrgid() not implemented at -e line 1"
> 
> So, with the above info in mind, i have modified the subroutine
> "switch_to_remote_user" in file "web-lib.pl" to the following:-
> 
> <-------- Start of code --------->
> 
> sub switch_to_remote_user
> {
> @remote_user_info = getpwnam($remote_user);
> @remote_user_info || &error(&text('switch_remote_euser', $remote_user));
> if ($< == 0) {
>         ($(, $)) = ($remote_user_info[3],
>                 ("$remote_user_info[3] ".join(" ", $remote_user_info[3],
>                 &other_groups($remote_user_info[0]))));
>  
>         ($>, $<) = ($remote_user_info[2], $remote_user_info[2]);
>         $ENV{'USER'} = $ENV{'LOGNAME'} = $remote_user;
>         $ENV{'HOME'} = $remote_user_info[7];
>         }
> } 
> 
> <-------- End of code --------->
> 
> Thanks in advance for any information you can provide to help me
> get this up and running on my BSDI 3.1 box.

That fix shouldn't cause any problems on other systems, so I'll put it
into usermin .. thanks!

  - Jamie