Hello,

Do I need to be root to set the setuid bit on an executable that I am the owner of?

Thanks, Allasso

You're free to experiment. You don't need anyone's permission for that. This question you could easily answer yourself. Please try.

The SUID bit means you will BECOME the root.
Which potentially means you could gain rights to something you don't need, maybe destroying things.

Only use the root suid for things that you must run as root.
Else I would not recommend using the suid bit

Thank you, UnSpawn, I appreciate your reply.

The answer is no, I don't have to be root, I can set the suid bit on files that I am the owner of. When I posted, I was having some other issues that made it appear that I couldn't, and I didn't know until now that simply running ls -l will show an "s" in the execute column if it is set. But I see it is getting set, even for shell scripts.

gerben12, the way I understand it, what one "BECOMES" is simply the owner of the executable that is being executed. They would only become root if root is the owner. If Joe is the owner, they become Joe.

The demonstration here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setuid seems to show that clearly.

Thanks for your replies,

Allasso

...but you know in Linux the setuid bit won't be effective on shell scripts, right?

I know if Joe is the owner you become Joe, but your original question was:

do I need to be root to set the uid bit.
Wrong assumption maybe

Anyway thank for your reaction too.