Thanks for your help everyone.  This little lesson has solved more than just 
my smbmount issues I have been having.

On Thursday 03 October 2002 12:51 pm, Gary Thornock asked of the Jedi Counsel:
> I hadn't realized that ping ran as root, though I guess it makes
> a certain sense.  Some systems (Solaris, I don't know what others)
> don't give non-root users access to ping or traceroute by default.
>
> Mount does need root privileges: most of the time, non-root users
> aren't allowed to mount or unmount filesystems at all.  It's mostly
> a security thing.
>
> mkdir, on the other hand, needs to *not* be setuid root, else
> users could make directories anywhere in the filesystem regardless
> of their permissions.
>
> - Gary
>
> --- Jacob Albretsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Okay,  I looked closer at other programs in /bin and picked out
> > this s thing.  Things like ping, su, and mount had it.  But other
> > things like mkdir and gzip don't.  I guess I am not seeing the
> > difference in the two permissions.  mkdir and gzip are owned by
> > root but don't need root privlages.  Where as ping and
> > mount do.  Is this just a security thing or....?
> >
> > Thanks for you explanations everyone.  It's funny how I find
> > something basic (yet so confusing) that I have not encountered
> > before.

-- 
Jacob Albretsen
Brigham Young University
Department of Physics and Astronomy
(801) 422-9291 || (801) 422-9272
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  ||  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://astro2.byu.edu/~jake  ||  http://www.xmission.com/~jakea

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