[comp.unix.ultrix] rcp processes... who should own them?

hubcap@hubcap.UUCP (Mike Marshall) (04/06/88)

Greetings:

We have noticed a difference between the way rcp works with Ultrix 
(our Ultrix anyway!) and the way it works with "normal" BSD. In both
environments rcp is setuid to root:

(our Ultrix box)  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root        46080 Nov 18 01:10 /usr/ucb/rcp
                                              ^
                                              |
                                            hmmm...
                                              |
                                              v
(brillig.umd.edu) -rwsr-xr-x  1 root        33792 Sep  2  1987 /bin/rcp

but it appears that with Ultrix an rcp process is owned by root and with 
BSD (at least brillig, and a few others we've checked) rcp processes 
are owned by whoever cranks them up. 

You may wonder why I care: it so happens that the other night, a user
here cranked up an rcp process which for some reason got hung. Since
it was owned by root, this user couldn't "kill -9" it. So it stayed 
hung (and we stayed connected to Maryland) until the next morning when 
I came into work. It would be nice if users could control processes they
initiate.

So... I wonder if one of you might know the reason that rcp processes initiated
from this machine (780 - 2.2) are owned by root, instead of the user. Also - 
I would be interested in hearing any security pros/cons on why Ultrix's
way is better/worse than BSD's way.

-Mike Marshall        hubcap@hubcap.clemson.edu            ...!hubcap!hubcap