From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!esquire!nrh Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Title: Re: su and suid compared Article-I.D.: esquire.377 Posted: Tue Aug 3 03:50:28 1982 Received: Wed Aug 4 01:02:27 1982 References: purdue.318 Actually, I thought dmr's response quite appropriate, although I sure would not have wanted to be in Mark's shoes. Personalities aside, dmr was right: If there ever was a hack-and-a-half, the /dev/mem scribbler is it. One can sympathize with the desire for a quick (is that REALLY important enough?) and context-maintaining (that is important!) method for becoming su. Perhaps the problem of how to maintain a program's "state" (c-shell history and variables) should be attacked. After all, it is just an accident that the uid is so easy to change. Changing the uid in /dev/mem is the sort of thing a programmer's soul suffers for in the afterlife.