On 05/24/2012 02:21 PM, Jim Meyering wrote: > Pádraig Brady wrote: >> -------- Original Message -------- >> Subject: [PULL] su >> Date: Thu, 24 May 2012 14:58:01 +0200 >> From: Ludwig Nussel <[email protected]> >> To: [email protected] >> >> Hi, >> >> coreutils isn't really interested in maintaining su anymore. >> Distributions have to add custom patches to fix bugs and add >> features. The worst offender is probably the pam patch. Fortunately >> we managed to sync the patch between openSUSE and Fedora meanwhile. >> Over time the risk that the patches divert again increases though. >> Since util-linux now contains a common login program it looks like a >> good new home for su too. >> >> To integrate su into util-linux I've extracted the history of the su >> program until the last GPLv2 version (they've changed to GPLv3 >> meanwhile) from coreutils' git and merged it with util-linux. >> Then I've added the patches used in Fedora and openSUSE and fixed the >> files to actually build. >> >> You can find the result in branch su-v1 (ff6b15d) at >> [email protected]:lnussel/util-linux.git >> >> I've also filed a pull request on github: >> https://github.com/karelzak/util-linux/pull/10 >> >> Originally I had planned to implement separate tty allocation for >> the child program on top of that to get rid of the evil setsid >> patch. It turned out to be more complicated than I thought though. The >> change would be too massive to backport anyways I guess. So the next >> step would be to rip out the non-pam legacy stuff and clean up the code >> to make it readable again. > > Hi Pádraig, > > Thanks for forwarding that. > > I would like to remove su.c, if/when possible from coreutils. > The last time I proposed that, the Hurd was mentioned as a > reason not to, since they relied on the su from coreutils. > > Is that still the case, and if so, can you (the Hurd) switch > to the one from util-linux? >
Well it's not clear cut to me, given that su isn't really Linux specific. Note Fedora and Suse use su from coreutils while debian use their own: http://pkg-shadow.alioth.debian.org/ Note also Fedora has `runuser` which is based on su: http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=blob;f=coreutils-8.7-runuser.patch;hb=HEAD There was also a very related request for `runuser` like functionality to be generally available: http://bugs.gnu.org/8700 It's probably worth bringing runuser with su, no matter where they end up. cheers, Pádraig.
