[Zope-dev] root ZServer

[Andreas Jung]

--On Mittwoch, 19. Januar 2005 17:04 Uhr +1100 Alan Milligan 
<alan at balclutha.org> wrote:

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> Andreas Jung wrote:
>
>| There is zero need to relax this requirement. You only have to start
>| Zope as root
> I just explained you cannot start as root ...

And I explained that Zope wants to the change the UID to a non-root account
for security reasons.


>
>| to get port 80 but it is in general not a good idea for *any* service to
>| run
>| as root for security reasons. So there is absolutely no reason to *not*
>| changing
>| the the uid of the process to a user with less permissions.
> Says you!!
>
> I happen to be using zope to wrap a number of excellent Python rpm
> packaging scripts/modules (eg yum, mach), and as part of this process,
> need to do rpm package installs from the zope server which obviously
> requires root access.
>
> I see no reason why I should be penalised for using the excellent
> workflow features of Zope in a system programming environment.
>
> If Zope is to be useful to the widest cross community, we really MUST
> stop this 'we know best' attitude and allow people at the coalface to
> override default behaviour as only they are in a position to evaluate
> the appropriateness of the 'security reasons'.
>

To be honest: if you need another behaviour than the one implemented then 
fix it on your own and maybe
put a patch into the Zope collector. So if someone has the same problem it 
can grab the patch. At least your usecase
does not seem to be common so I don't think we should add such a dangerous 
feature (although if disabled by default)
with Zope.  There are also other applications e.g. postgres that refuse to 
run as root.  If  you need to perform
root-level operations from within a non-rooted Zope there are enough 
solutions available to give
the application limited root right (sudo etc....search on freshmeat). I 
consider your request as a YAGNI.

-aj