samba - May 2008 - Samba as nonroot

Hi,

Im trying to run samba as a non-root user and I was wondering if this is
even possible, and if not what is preventing it from being ran as a normal
user??

lordm@stat.ufl.edu wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Im trying to run samba as a non-root user and I was wondering if this is
> even possible
No, it's not.
> and if not what is preventing it from being ran as a normal
> user??
>   
You couldn't bind to privileged ports would be the big one. You might be 
able to modify the source so it runs on different ports (although that 
would mean windows systems couldn't connect, you might be able to coax 
another samba machine into it), you would then have issues with 
permissions (you couldn't suid/sgid to the connecting user).

*Michael Heydon - IT Administratorr *
michaelh@jaswin.com.au <mailto:michaelh@jaswin.com.au>

Oops, I accidently sent this to Michael's own email, not to the list.  
Here it is again in the right place.

On 14/05/2008, at 9:48 AM, Michael Heydon wrote:
> lordm@stat.ufl.edu wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Im trying to run samba as a non-root user and I was wondering if  
>> this is
>> even possible
> No, it's not.
>
>> and if not what is preventing it from being ran as a normal
>> user??
>>
> You couldn't bind to privileged ports would be the big one. You  
> might be able to modify the source so it runs on different ports  
> (although that would mean windows systems couldn't connect, you  
> might be able to coax another samba machine into it), you would  
> then have issues with permissions (you couldn't suid/sgid to the  
> connecting user).
Also, I think samba needs to be able to fork and execute.

It ought to be possible on Solaris 10 using privileges - I intend to  
test this myself in the next few weeks. (I currently have a DHCP  
server running successfully as a non-root user, binding to privileged  
ports etc etc).

I'll report my findings if anybody is actually curious.

--
Matt Skerritt
matt.skerritt@agrav.net