am I running as root? sperl problems

Thanks to the help of this newsgroup, I'm almost there with my setup.

I'm trying to build an application running locally (Listen 127.0.0.1),
and even if I never installed a webserver in my life, after 2 days I
have Apache up&running, and cgi perl scripts (which are the main
application I'm building) working correctly. Almost correctly.

Now comes the big - hopefully last - trouble: I need my main script to
be run as root.

Making the cgi script root suid (http://www.irt.org/articles/js184/
index.htm) stops the script working with "Internal Server
Error ..." (the logs give me a " Can't do setuid (cannot exec sperl)"
error).
So Installed per-suid, solved the " Insecure $ENV{PATH} " error by
cleaning %ENV, and obtained this, with the line printf("<HR>My userid
is $> (%s)<HR>", (getpwuid($>))[0]):

My userid is 0 (root)

yet the successive behavior (a simple my @l=`/usr/bin/locate *.doc`;
print @l
shows that the script is not running as root, as it only reports a
couple of files, the same I would find if running as "Apache".

any hint???


thanks1


alessandro

alexxx.magni.RemoveThis@gmail.com wrote:
> Thanks to the help of this newsgroup, I'm almost there with my setup.
>
> I'm trying to build an application running locally (Listen 127.0.0.1),
> and even if I never installed a webserver in my life, after 2 days I
> have Apache up&running, and cgi perl scripts (which are the main
> application I'm building) working correctly. Almost correctly.
>
> Now comes the big - hopefully last - trouble: I need my main script to
> be run as root.
>
> Making the cgi script root suid (http://www.irt.org/articles/js184/
> index.htm) stops the script working with "Internal Server
> Error ..." (the logs give me a " Can't do setuid (cannot exec sperl)"
> error).
> So Installed per-suid, solved the " Insecure $ENV{PATH} " error by
> cleaning %ENV, and obtained this, with the line printf("<HR>My userid
> is $> (%s)<HR>", (getpwuid($>))[0]):
>
> My userid is 0 (root)
>
> yet the successive behavior (a simple my @l=`/usr/bin/locate *.doc`;
> print @l
> shows that the script is not running as root, as it only reports a
> couple of files, the same I would find if running as "Apache".
>
> any hint???
>
>
> thanks1
>
>
> alessandro

I'd like to post the way I solved it (although nobody answered! You
lazy guys!)

-) no need to set suid bits with this method, no need to
install suidperl, no need to clean $ENV{PATH}
-) visudo -f /etc/sudoers
add this line :
apache ALL=NOPASSWD:scriptname.pl
and comment:
#Defaults requiretty
-) Then you can call them so:
system('/usr/bin/sudo', 'scriptname.pl');


hope somebody will find it useful...

alessandro