inetutils permissions?

[Bill Cole]

On 14 Jul 2018, at 2:09 (-0400), Richard L. Hamilton wrote:

> rlogin, rsh, and I think rcp need to be setuid root, because they have 
> to use privileged ports.  But they were installed without the setuid 
> root permission set (they worked normally after setting it by hand).
>
> Is there any reason that isn't set as part of installation? Granted 
> it's not without downside, but someone that's using the old r-commands 
> probably isn't too worried about that anyway.

It looks like this is a bug in the inetutils config/build system. It 
selects '/usr/bin/install' as the install tool, but does not verify what 
flavor of 'install' that is, assuming that it will allow GNU 'install' 
argument ordering. However, that's a BSD-heritage 'install' which does 
not handle putting the source filename before options, and it breaks. 
Making things worse, it is a breakage that inetutils is entirely 
unprepared for, because it assumes that the only way 'install' can fail 
is a permissions problem.

I've just submitted a bug to the GNU inetutils maintainer.


-- 
Bill Cole
bill at scconsult.com or billcole at apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses)
Currently Seeking Steadier Work: https://linkedin.com/in/billcole