Talk:Setuid
Speaking as a newbie trying to understand this concept, a few things could be done to improve this article:
- Provide an explanation of 'elevated privledges'
- Describe different ways of viewing the suid and what it would look like
- If this article is also meant to cover setgid, a bit more explanation would be helpful, and again examples of how you can tell its set
- Expansion in the directories section would really be helpful
- I have one more: I guess not every user is always allowed to use setuid on every files. So there must first be a password check or something similar. So, how can a user change the execution privilege level when he/she is currently not entitled to do so? --Abdull 11:02, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
This Demo is TERRIBLE!!
With regards and respect to the author, and while overall this is a very useful page, this example is horroble and borders on obfuscation.
The page is about one of the simplest concepts in Unix et al. One would think that even if it is meant to be a definitive piece on Setuid, it would be kept as simple as possible because it is of most interest and use to the new user.
However, the author has chosen as his first example, a very high level programming language which, while it allows itself to cover all bases, is totally incomprehensible to those not schooled in it. If you want to include this demo so that people can run it, fine. But please add an English explanation.
All my programming education and experience is from 30+ years ago. Even though I can program in machine code, have been a WinDoze user for 30 years and had my first intro to Unix 30 yrs ago, I have never had the opportunity or need to master this type of programming language.
Could you please rewrite this demonstration in a language that Einstein could understand? For I venture to say that even Albert would understand that his inability to understand this example is not due to his own ignorance caused by never having been taught this at Leipzig, so much as to the author's attempt to show off how big his flash drive is.Tgdf (talk) 19:54, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
The code given in the article is quite clear. It prints out the real and effective UID and GID of the user running the program, to demonstrate how the setuid bit changes the effective user id when the program is running. As far as I can see, the only reason the code was included is because it was short and readers may want to try the example themselves. If you don't understand the code in the example, that's fine, but I think what it does is fairly clear from the text it outputs.