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Posted By

kangell on 03/20/08


Tagged

unix os user drop uid pwd super privileges


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wbowers


Drop Privileges

Published in: Python 

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  1. # Get the UID the application was started with
  2. # which must have been 'root' if you want this process
  3. # to have 'root' like abilities.
  4. privUID = os.geteuid()
  5. # Get the UID that the application should use for
  6. # most of its processing, 'nobody' is usually
  7. # a good choice.
  8. normalUID = pwd.getpwnam( 'nobody' )[2]
  9.  
  10. def runAsNormal():
  11. 	"""Switch this process to normal privileges, we shouldn't be able to 
  12. do anything naughty in this mode."""
  13. 	os.seteuid( normalUID )
  14. def runAsPrivileged():
  15. 	"""Switch to super user privileges, here we can do anything we want."""
  16. 	os.seteuid( privUID )
  17.  
  18. # Once program has initialized, drop privileges
  19. runAsNormal()
  20.  
  21. # ... some normal application code...
  22.  
  23. # Do do something that requires super user privileges 
  24. try:
  25. 	runAsPrivileged()
  26. 	# ... do the stuff we need to be super for
  27. finally:
  28. 	# Switch out of super mode and back to normal
  29. 	runAsNormal()

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