Bug 134611

Summary: permissions.secure breaks startx for non-root user
Product: [openSUSE] SUSE LINUX 10.0 Reporter: Michael James <Michael.James>
Component: SecurityAssignee: Security Team bot <security-team>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED QA Contact: E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity: Minor    
Priority: P5 - None CC: sndirsch
Version: Final   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: SuSE Linux 10.0   
Whiteboard:
Found By: Customer Services Priority:
Business Priority: Blocker: ---
Marketing QA Status: --- IT Deployment: ---

Description Michael James 2005-11-21 04:34:15 UTC 
Setting the security level to set the permissions specified in /etc/permissions.secure takes the SUID bit off /usr/X11R6/bin/Xorg. This means that unpreveleged users can't run the startx command to get a graphical interface on a text console, say a machine in runlevel 3. The files and permissions in permissions.secure seem to be lagging the files and links in /usr/X11R6/bin as: 
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root       4 2005-09-27 03:30 XFree86 -> Xorg*
-rwx--x--x  1 root root 1847788 2005-09-16 22:58 Xorg*
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root       7 2005-04-28 18:28 Xwrapper -> XFree86*

/usr/X11R6/bin/Xorg                                     root:root         0711
/usr/X11R6/bin/Xwrapper                                 root:root         4755

Xorg gets its SUID bit stripped, Xwrapper is just a link so doesn't benefit from a SUID bit, and Xfree is left out entirely.

I'd suggest that if leaving a generally acessible SUID bit on Xorg is dangerous, that it's group be changed to video and only members of that group be allowed  allowed to run startx.

/usr/X11R6/bin/Xorg                                     root:video        4710
/usr/X11R6/bin/Xwrapper ( -> Xorg directly )            root:root          755
/usr/X11R6/bin/Xfree                                    root:root          755

Or else Xwrapper carry the SUID bit but be made a real wrapper that protects against misuse of a preveleged Xorg.

I can't see the sense of setting permissions.secure so tight that people are forced to back down to permissions.easy to use the system normally.
Comment 1 Ludwig Nussel 2005-11-21 08:37:21 UTC 
- removing the suid bit was done by the xorg maintainer, I suppose for a reason
- startx is an obsolete method anyways, use a display manager
- you can always use /etC/permissions.local to override permissions

I've removed Xwrapper from the permissions file now as it's a symlink anyways.
Comment 2 Ludwig Nussel 2005-11-21 08:37:56 UTC 
*** Bug 134610 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 3 Ludwig Nussel 2005-11-21 08:38:06 UTC 
*** Bug 134609 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***