Hi all,
I have read through just about every relevant post on this site and I also experimented a bit and I'm looking for your opinion on a solution have come up with.
I am attempting to connect a Linux web server to a monitoring package. This packages (absolutely) requires a Windows based probe on the same network as the Linux server. The probe itself uses SNMP, Ping, and Telnet to talk to the server. It's a waste to put another Windows box in the location for that one purpose.
So, I got everything working, got the probe installed, I see that Ping and Telnet does not work, but hey that's fine because SNMP works great. And yes, its running as something other than root.
I have to leave notepad open and I have to have a GUI on the machine, but that's not bad considering my situation.
My question is, is this a ridiculous solution? I plan on creating a script to install Wine and set up this service. We're talking about 37Megs of disk space and very little overhead. Can anyone think of a reason why this is a really bad idea?
Windows SNMP Probe via Wine
mclovin you need to learn about Linux security.
Really Root on Linux does not exist as most people think. Root is basically a construct nothing more. Root = Normal User + POSIX capabilities permissions.
If your kernel has posix file capabilities give wine assign CAP_NET_RAW permission to wine. There is less security risk this way.
Every segment of the powers that root has can be turned on 1 at a time for a program if you know how. Reason why I go threw people for even running wine as root on a Linux box ever.
Other ways of using posix capabilities have existed since 2.2 Linux Kernel.
Really Root on Linux does not exist as most people think. Root is basically a construct nothing more. Root = Normal User + POSIX capabilities permissions.
If your kernel has posix file capabilities give wine assign CAP_NET_RAW permission to wine. There is less security risk this way.
Every segment of the powers that root has can be turned on 1 at a time for a program if you know how. Reason why I go threw people for even running wine as root on a Linux box ever.
Other ways of using posix capabilities have existed since 2.2 Linux Kernel.
I'm not sure if you misunderstood me or if I misunderstood you. After looking through this site I noticed many many comments by users regarding running wine as root. I thought it would be helpful to mention that I was not doing this.
I certainly understand what you are saying about the posix capabilities, but are you saying I should give my wine user more power? At the moment things are working well I don't see a need to change access levels.
I certainly understand what you are saying about the posix capabilities, but are you saying I should give my wine user more power? At the moment things are working well I don't see a need to change access levels.
posix file capabilities grants the permission to the application ie wine not to the user. Give the application more power and applications that need to ping will work. Normal user for every other program can stay normal. Some people go as far as having two wine programs one with extra permissions one without.
