Announcing available new software:

The privileged (setuid root) command ptyfix is used from within executables
that use the openpty() call. An example is xterm: with this helper, xterm
itself does not need to be setuid.

Traditionally, xterm is setuid so that it can set the permissions on the
tty device securely, and so it can set up utmp and wtmp entries; it does
not give up privileges so that at the end it can re-set the permissions and
un-do the utmp, wtmp entries. The command ptyfix can do the setting and
un-setting, so xterm does not need to be setuid at all.

Currently ptyfix works only on Compaq Tru64 UNIX (DEC OSF/1) machines.
Please feel free to adapt this software to other operating systems.

The ptyfix package is available from
http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au:8000/u/psz/securedu.html#xterm or
http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au:8000/u/psz/du/ptyfix.tgz

Paul Szabo - pszmaths.usyd.edu.au http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au:8000/u/psz/
School of Mathematics and Statistics University of Sydney 2006 Australia

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