How to make setuid / suid shell scripts work the way setuid binaries work? - Red Hat Customer Portal

Log in to Your Red Hat Account

Your Red Hat account gives you access to your profile, preferences, and services, depending on your status.

If you are a new customer, register now for access to product evaluations and purchasing capabilities.

Need access to an account?

If your company has an existing Red Hat account, your organization administrator can grant you access.

If you have any questions, please contact customer service.

Red Hat Account Number:

Red Hat Account

Customer Portal

For your security, if you’re on a public computer and have finished using your Red Hat services, please be sure to log out.

Select Your Language

Issue

What's the procedure to get root-owned setuid scripts to always be run with root permissions?
When executing shell scripts that have the setuid bit (e.g., perms of rwsr-xr-x), the scripts run as the user that executes them, not as the user that owns them. This is contrary to how setuid is handled for binaries (e.g., /usr/bin/passwd), which run as the user that owns them, regardless of which user executes them.

Environment

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

Subscriber exclusive content

A Red Hat subscription provides unlimited access to our knowledgebase of over 48,000 articles and solutions.

Current Customers and Partners

Log in for full access

Log In

New to Red Hat?

Learn more about Red Hat subscriptions

Welcome! Check out the Getting Started with Red Hat page for quick tours and guides for common tasks.

Here are the common uses of Markdown.

Code blocks

~~~
Code surrounded in tildes is easier to read
~~~

Links/URLs

[Red Hat Customer Portal](https://access.redhat.com)