[ale] sendmail using real rather than effective user ID

[Lightner, Jeff]

On a couple of recently loaded servers including a RHEL6 I found that Sendmail is sending emails generated by root processes using my real user ID rather than root’s ID.

These root processes were started from command line after I did “sudo su –“ to become root.   The processes definitely show root as the user running them.   The sudo man page says that when one switches to another user both real and effective user ID are set to the new user which seems to be born out by the “id” command.   However, if I run “who am i” and “whoami” I’m seeing my real user id (the one I was before doing the sudo su) and effective ID.   However, this is also true on my RHEL5 boxes.

Did something change in Sendmail where it is detecting the underlying user somehow?   On my RHEL5 boxes the email goes out just fine as root@ after a sudo su -.





__________________________________________________________________________________________
Jeff Lightner | UNIX/Linux Administrator | DS Waters of America, Inc | 5660 New Northside Drive, Ste 250 | Atlanta, GA 30328
•: (Direct Dial) 678-486-3516 |•: (Cell) 678-772-0018 |  •:jlightner at water.com







Proud partner. Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

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