On Wed, May 24, 2000 at 02:43:04PM +0800, Wan Hing Wah wrote > Is it any method that I can check whether the user is a local user > (that mean use the computer by sitting in front of the computer > physically).It maybe useful so that I can make a program which is setuid > to root and check whether the user is local and grant permission to > some physical device... >
The best way of verifying that a user is actually sitting at the console is to check the name of their controlling tty to ensure that it is set and is a regular tty and not a pty. This is how the Debian X startup scripts do it. It's not foolproof (it won't work if they are running screen/ in X/telnet localhost/ etc.), but it should never give a false positive. How to identify the controlling tty is left as an exercise for the reader... John P. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.mdt.net.au/~john Debian Linux admin & support:technical services
