Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (1587 mails)

[stefan.troeger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Stefan Troeger)]

Hi,

On Sun, Nov 22, 1998 at 20:36 +0000, Ole Kofoed Hansen wrote:

> OK, thats how to set uid on the screensaver. Next question: WHY?
> Why would a screensaver need to run as root?

The KDE screensavers can do screen locking. And if you want to
unlock your screen you have to give your password. Now the
screensaver encrypts the given password and compares it with
your encrypted password from /etc/shadow. If the two passwords
match the screen gets unlocked.

[sttr]/home/sttr> ls -l /etc/shadow
-rw-r-----   1 root     shadow        695 Oct 12 18:57 /etc/shadow

As you can see /etc/shadow isn't readable for normal users (for
security reasons). That's why the suid bit is needed.

Ciao,
        Stefan
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