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Message-ID: <44CF6233.3050707@christopherschultz.net>
Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2006 10:16:19 -0400
From: Christopher Schultz <chris@christopherschultz.net>
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To: Tomcat Users List <users@tomcat.apache.org>
Subject: Re: Servlet that needs ROOT access
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Everyone,

>> The servlet application needs to do things like mkfs,=20
>> vgcfgrestore, vgchange,=20
>> mount and umount.

Eek. From a webapp?

> I'd use setuid scripts with very careful permissions:
>=20
> - Write some shell scripts, one per action, to do what you need;
>=20
> - Audit those scripts for possible security holes;

I agree. In fact, I might even go farther and suggest that you go with
more a batch-job-list configuration, where your webapp drops
descriptions of the work to be done into a directory or a database or
something. Then, have a cron job or something like that come along every
so often and process the jobs.

Firing off new processes from Java can get ugly (even though it really
shouldn't be), and if you are putting user input into your command-line,
you're just asking for trouble.

With batch-style processing, you generally treat everything as data and
not as a command (as one might be tempted do when firing off a process
from within the JVM).

If you need to do stuff like mkfs, mount, etc. I assume that this is an
/intranet/-style webapp -- meaning that your users are relatively
trusted when compared to an open web site.

-chris


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