On Wed, 3 Oct 2007, Jim Meyering wrote:
Martin Koeppe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
A question arises: How should one portably test for "root"? Neither
"root" nor uid 0 seem to be a POSIX requirement. I found one solution
so far, but I'm not sure how good it really is:
For shell scripts run:
$ /usr/sbin/chroot / /bin/true
If successful, you have root rights.
I'm leery of this.
What if chroot works for non-privileged users on some type of system?
Since Interix is the problem here, how about adding
a test that'd be run solely on that system?
Yes, no problem with that. I only thought there might be a
possibility to check the root-ness without an explicit comparison of
uid or username. This need not necessarily be the chroot()
function. But I don't know the POSIX standard in that detail.
If you want an explicit check, then for Interix 3 different users/uids
must be checked: System (uid ???), Domain Administrator (uid 1049076)
and local Administrator (uid 197108). All of these have "root" rights.
See: http://www.interopcommunity.com/faqs.aspx#307
Martin
