On Sun, 13 Jan 2002, pesarif wrote:

> 
> What I'm really concerned about is: I don't like the idea of running things 
> SUID (especially games).  I know very little about X and programming and was 
> just wondering if this will ever be "fixed"?

You can use drivers like fbdev, in which case I believe dga can (perhaps
this is still theoretical) use /dev/fbdev instead of /dev/mem, and not 
need SUID root.

This SUID problem is one of the main reasons why dga is not a good idea.

The other reason that dga is not a good idea is :
"Why should XFree86 provide a mechanism for direct framebuffer access anyway ?"
 If the app isn't interested in using the X protocol to drive the screen
(and DRI and XV show that that can be plenty fast enough), the app should
just chvt to a free virtual terminal and use svgalib instead.

> Otherwise, game developers will be forced to be root just to make games 
> (unrealistic on multiuser systems).

Games developers need big control over their machines, and must surely
be trusted with the machine ? Perhaps making /dev/mem group writable
by the user of each machine might be sensible in that sort of restricted 
environment ?

> And if the game isn't written well, SUID  will leave users with a
> glaring security problem.  IMHO, this SUID issue must be "fixed" soon.

Honestly, that would just move the security hole from the game into
the X server.

-- 
Dr. Andrew C. Aitchison         Computer Officer, DPMMS, Cambridge
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~werdna

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