On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, Alan Davies wrote:
My understanding is that smbmount is not and will not be supported on current and future releases of LINUX. You have to do mount -t smbfs....
smbmount works here, on a "latest production release".
There was something about suid - that I didn't understand.
There's a helper program called smbmnt that has to be installed suid-root.
I am not ready to move home directory hosting to LINUX - for several reasons... NT server (PDC and BDC) have mirrored technology, software raid and gigabit fibre backbone connections....all of which I don't have on LINUX - and may not even be supported by LINUX....yet.
Software raid definitely is, gigabit ethernet almost certainly is, mirroring...what is being mirrored?
A useful idea would be to create a script, make it executable only to users other than root. Make the script have the root password in it - and make it work with parameters? I.e. you pass to it the username and password of the user and it will then mount it properly. Just an idea That sounds like worth a try. I sort of forgot that LINUX can have a file 'executable' but not 'readable' So the password should be safe.....? As long as the script does not 'abort' when root has access leaving the user with root access.....
Nonononononononononononononononononono!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE don't do this!!! Passwords should never be stored in clear-text, especially not the root password - it's sheer insanity. What you are trying to do (enable ordinary users to execute a specific program with root privileges) already exists as a widely-used facility - it's the "suid" thing, and smbmount is already designed to work this way. There are several major security implications of what you are trying to do. In particular: o Suid programs are inherently dangerous and you should be very careful when using them. o Command line contents are publicly visible. If, for example, you pass a username and password to a script on the command line, then these will be visible to any other user on the system. Michael