describe the motivation for our current su_monkeysphere_user implementation.

1 files changed, 14 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/src/share/common b/src/share/common
index 773c11f..4120259 100644
--- a/src/share/common
+++ b/src/share/common
@@ -92,6 +92,20 @@ log() {
 
 # run command as monkeysphere user
 su_monkeysphere_user() {
+    # our main goal here is to run the given command as the the
+    # monkeysphere user, but without prompting for any sort of
+    # authentication.  If this is not possible, we should just fail.
+
+    # FIXME: our current implementation is overly restrictive, because
+    # there may be some su PAM configurations that would allow su
+    # "$MONKEYSPHERE_USER" -c "$@" to Just Work without prompting,
+    # allowing specific users to invoke commands which make use of
+    # this user.
+
+    # chpst (from runit) would be nice to use, but we don't want to
+    # introduce an extra dependency just for this.  This may be a
+    # candidate for re-factoring if we switch implementation languages.
+
     case $(id -un) in
 	# if monkeysphere user, run the command under bash
 	"$MONKEYSPHERE_USER")