[mythtv] issues with 16491?
Michael T. Dean
mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Mon Mar 17 03:52:56 UTC 2008
On 03/16/2008 10:04 PM, Nigel Pearson wrote:
>> Not sure what an EUID is
> Effective User ID. Basically,
> a number that represents your username.
>
> Every shell that I tried has it set,
> so I am mystified about this failure, Matt.
>
I'm pretty sure ksh doesn't have it, and I'm thinking the original
Bourne shell didn't. Doesn't Ubuntu use dash or something (perhaps only
for root)? I don't think dash sets EUID. Unfortunately, I can't even
find a man page for it (there are a lot of man pages that spell out the
word "dash," meaning hyphen). However, unfortunately even the man pages
don't tend to list all the things they don't have ;), so a direct test
(from a shell that /does not inherit/ its environment from a bash shell)
would be a safer way to find out. (Perhaps in your tests, Nigel, some
shells may have inherited the EUID env var?)
Regardless, if we do patch the script to allow execution with shells
that don't set it, a more robust version of the quick-test patch I gave
would be required. It should really have a fallback in case EUID isn't
and can't be set (i.e. if /usr/bin/id is not an executable) to allow
running the script without the -p, as before the recent changes. Those
who don't have EUID and don't have /usr/bin/id can wait for the frontend
to redo prescaling.
Oh, and TTBOMK, the id executable--if installed--should always be
installed at /usr/bin/id. It's part of coreutils, so it's probably
installed on all GNU/Linux systems, though I don't know if that's a safe
assumption on other OS's. And, even on GNU/Linux, it's always possible
someone may have moved it. Therefore, we should really have a fallback
just in case there is no EUID even after attempting to set it.
Mike
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