[syslog-ng] Unable to run syslog-ng 3.0.4 as non-root on solaris 10

[Balazs Scheidler]

On Mon, 2009-08-17 at 12:05 +0200, SZALAY Attila wrote:
> Hi All!
> 
> On Fri, 2009-08-14 at 09:20 -0400, Jeffrey Psolla wrote:
> > 
> > Yesterday I upgraded syslog-ng on our central log server from 2.0.5
> >  to 3.0.4 . The OS is solaris 10. Prior to the upgrade I was able to
> > run syslog-ng as a non-root user with the following command:
> 
> syslog-ng versions before 3.0 open the source files before the uid
> changes. But that would cause problem when syslog-ng reloading, because
> that time the root privileges has been already dropped, so syslog-ng
> cannot reopen the files.


Just to clarify, but Sasa is right here: syslog-ng 2.1 and before
initialized the configuration right _before_ changing the user/group
setting. However this means that whenever you reload the configuration
with a SIGHUP, you'll get a problem and you can only restart syslog-ng.

Thus, syslog-ng 3.0 changed this, we change user/group setting _before_
initializing the configuration file.

However I see no easy way out, unless you also sacrifice configuration
reloads. I might add a --delay-setuid command line option, if you are
willing to sacrifice reloads. Are you?

> 
> Because of this Bazsi changed the order. So you have no mysteries error
> when reloading syslog-ng but a clear message at starting time.
> 
> The problematic file is the door file which stay in the /etc directory
> where non-root programs cannot write (create and/or delete files).
> 
> So I think that it's not possible to run syslog-ng as non-root user on
> Solaris now.
> 
> 
> 
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> 
-- 
Bazsi