Problems using the getprpwent (3) function

Augusto Vinhaes — Thu, 27 Jun 2002 13:22:20 GMT

Hi !
We have some programmers here that are using the getprpwent (3) function to get user information that are stored on /tcb. The problem is that this function don't return any information. I think this happens due to the /tcb permissions that prevent access to the /tcb/file/auth/... files. What can I do to fix it ?

Regards,
Augusto

Re: Problems using the getprpwent (3) function

Mark Greene_1 — Thu, 27 Jun 2002 13:40:15 GMT

If you are using NIS, there are additional considerations:

From the man page:
"Additionally, all of these routines depend on the configuration of the
Name Service Switch file, /etc/nsswitch.conf. These routines use the
switch for the passwd database."

The other obvious question is the program that does the call running as root? If not, you can try a work-around by setting-up a seperate processes that is SUID root and then running that process from your program. The downside here is that this is a massive security hole, and you need to add security checks to the process to ensure that just anyone cannot running it and thereby hack your tcb.

HTH
mark

topic Problems using the getprpwent (3) function in Operating System - HP-UX

Problems using the getprpwent (3) function

Re: Problems using the getprpwent (3) function