]> The Tcpdump Group git mirrors - tcpdump/commit
Skip privilege dropping when using -Z root on --with-user builds 812/head
authorMartin Willi <[email protected]>
Tue, 12 Nov 2019 12:43:31 +0000 (13:43 +0100)
committerFrancois-Xavier Le Bail <[email protected]>
Thu, 24 Aug 2023 01:05:13 +0000 (03:05 +0200)
commitd6c4b176bab676b4d73dc4b1a9fd8c803db88194
tree3b8cdf843e3315a5c34e200bb5c67f87c37619fa
parent57a7eaecb12d1965de568b9208c663bb09b2fc32
Skip privilege dropping when using -Z root on --with-user builds

Distributions which started building --with-user to switch to an
unpriviliged user claim that the old behavior of running under root
can be restored by passing "-Z root" on the command line. However,
doing so is different from not using --with-user, as tcpdump still
drops privileges and sets supplementary user groups.

In Linux containers using user namespaces with an in-container root
user mapped to an unprivileged external user, calling setgroups() is
usually denied, as it would allow that unprivileged user to leave
groups (see user_namespaces(7) for details). Passing "-Z root" on
a --with-user build still goes through initgroups() and therefore
setgroups(), which will fail in such a container environment. This
makes tcpdump builds using --with-user effectively unusable in such
containers.

Adjust the "-Z root" fallback to skip any privilege dropping and
supplementary group setup, making it identical to builds not using
--with-user.
tcpdump.c