Re: GSoC 2008 dma enhancements

["Dan M" <strangepics@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 7:27 AM, Max Lindner <gisanka@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hi out there!
>
> Seems that the general tenor goes to a separate utility/helper
> application with suid-bit set which takes over the steps where
> root-access is compulsory. I will take a look at qmail which seems to
> have a similar design (as I read in the other dma thread which came up
> last week).

The only qmail program that runs setuid is qmail-queue. All critical
programs run under separate user/group ids.

qmail-local - the program that delivers into a user's mailbox runs as root.

In short qmail does as little as possible as root, all qmail programs
do not trust each other.
http://cr.yp.to/qmail/guarantee.html

Here are the diagrams of how things work:
http://www.axz.de/qmail/pix/index.html

-- 
Dan