Re: [Patch] Allow to disable root privileges with CYGWIN=noroot

[Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin at cygwin dot com>]

On Aug 29 16:04, Christian Franke wrote:
> For members of administrator group, Cygwin runs with root access rights.  
> Cygwin enables the Windows backup and restore privileges which are not  
> enabled by default.
>
> This is IMO not desirable under all circumstances.
>
> This patch adds a new flag to the Cygwin environment variable.
> If 'CYGWIN=noroot' is set, the extra privileges are removed after Cygwin  
> startup.
>
> This allows to run a Cygwin shell with the same default access rights as  
> cmd or explorer.

I don't like the idea of the patch for three reasons:

- It adds a new CYGWIN setting and
- It adds a new CYGWIN setting which is redundant on all systems
  supporting UAC.  Either you're running in a default shell with
  restricted rights, which means, you don't have admin privileges
  anyway, or you're runnning in a admin shell and you very likely want
  all rights you can get as admin.
- On all older systems you shouldn't work as admin by default anyway,
  especially not on Windows XP.  And then, *if* you're running an admin
  session, you usually want admin rights.  What's the advantage of 
  faking you don't have these rights?


Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
Cygwin Project Co-Leader          cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Red Hat