>>>>> "Chris" == Chris G Demetriou <cgd@alpha.bostic.com> writes:

Chris> why are you so keen to have the _real_ uid set, in any case?
Chris> for everything except access(), the effective UID is used
Chris> for determining stuff like permissions...

The Kerberos library creates ticket files, which we want to be owned by
the user.  It assumes if it sees getuid() != geteuid() that it's a
setuid program, and it temporarily swaps the two so that the user's UID
is on the ticket file.

When login-type programs can't set the ruid and desire to do other stuff
as root later, and don't want to fork, they have to do other gross
things  like understanding ticket files and chown()ing them.  ick.

==John

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