Subject: Re: [PATCH] t/lib-httpd: switch SANITY check for NOT_ROOT

From: Achim Gratz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 21:04:57 +0100

Kyle J. McKay writes:
>>> "id -u" works for me in MSYS and cygwin (each appears to have it's
>>> own id.exe).
>>
>> That's comforting. MSYS was the one I was most worried about. What UID
>> do they report? I.e., do they correctly tell us if we are root (or
>> more accurately, if we are not root)?

Checking for UID 0 won't work on Cygwin in the general case.  That fools
literally dozens of Perl module tests that find out the user can
actually do something they think (s)he should be unable to.

> It's funny, really.  The MSYS version gives a different answer than
> the cygwin version although both are non-zero.  The MSYS perl gives
> the same answer as the MSYS id and the cygwin perl gives the same
> answer as the cygwin id.

That result changes depending on the content /etc/passwd (which arguably
is a either a bug or a feature depending on which way you look at it).
But Windows itself doesn't have the notion of a root user at all, so
looking for one isn't going to be helpful.

> I'm not even sure what it would mean to "be root" on one of those
> systems.

It means you have the capabilities that a root user would be expected to
have.  For most intents and purposes on Windows this would mean the user
running the command is in group 544 ("Administrators" in an english
version of Windows).

> The closest I can think of would be to run as the "SYSTEM" user.  And
> that's not nearly as simple as just "sudo -s". [1].

The SYSTEM user isn't a good approximation of root under UN*X for
reasonably modern Windows versions.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/120929

For more discussion on the UID 0 topic from a Cygwin perspective, see

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.os.cygwin.applications/28129
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.os.cygwin.applications/28203

Regards,
Achim.
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