Problems with Alias, /bin/sh and sudo


 
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Old 05-29-2008
Problems with Alias, /bin/sh and sudo

'exec /bin/sh' breaks alias

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I have an application that requires su to root in order to run some commands. Unfortunately, my corporate policy only allows sudo so I created an alias in .profile as "alias su="su myaccount". My external application logs in with the first account no problem, it then runs 'exec /bin/sh' and then tries to su with the myaccount password but it comes back with 'incorrect password'. If I use an ssh account, login with my first account and then su with myaccount password it works fine. It looks like the 'exec /bin/sh' does not take the alias. /bin/sh points to bash. I have the alias in .bashrc, .profile, .shrc and .bash_profile but none of this works.

any ideas on how to get the alias to work with the /bin/sh shell?

Thanks

Stu
 
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SMRSH(8)						      System Manager's Manual							  SMRSH(8)

NAME
smrsh - restricted shell for sendmail SYNOPSIS
smrsh -c command DESCRIPTION
The smrsh program is intended as a replacement for sh for use in the ``prog'' mailer in sendmail(8) configuration files. It sharply limits the commands that can be run using the ``|program'' syntax of sendmail in order to improve the over all security of your system. Briefly, even if a ``bad guy'' can get sendmail to run a program without going through an alias or forward file, smrsh limits the set of programs that he or she can execute. Briefly, smrsh limits programs to be in a single directory, by default /usr/libexec/sm.bin, allowing the system administrator to choose the set of acceptable commands, and to the shell builtin commands ``exec'', ``exit'', and ``echo''. It also rejects any commands with the characters ``', `<', `>', `;', `$', `(', `)', ` ' (carriage return), or ` ' (newline) on the command line to prevent ``end run'' attacks. It allows ``||'' and ``&&'' to enable commands like: ``"|exec /usr/local/bin/filter || exit 75"'' Initial pathnames on programs are stripped, so forwarding to ``/usr/bin/vacation'', ``/home/server/mydir/bin/vacation'', and ``vacation'' all actually forward to ``/usr/libexec/sm.bin/vacation''. System administrators should be conservative about populating the sm.bin directory. For example, a reasonable additions is vacation(1), and the like. No matter how brow-beaten you may be, never include any shell or shell-like program (such as perl(1)) in the sm.bin direc- tory. Note that this does not restrict the use of shell or perl scripts in the sm.bin directory (using the ``#!'' syntax); it simply dis- allows execution of arbitrary programs. Also, including mail filtering programs such as procmail(1) is a very bad idea. procmail(1) allows users to run arbitrary programs in their procmailrc(5). COMPILATION
Compilation should be trivial on most systems. You may need to use -DSMRSH_PATH="path" to adjust the default search path (defaults to ``/bin:/usr/bin'') and/or -DSMRSH_CMDDIR="dir" to change the default program directory (defaults to ``/usr/libexec/sm.bin''). FILES
/usr/adm/sm.bin - default directory for restricted programs on most OSs /var/adm/sm.bin - directory for restricted programs on HP UX and Solaris /usr/libexec/sm.bin - directory for restricted programs on FreeBSD (>= 3.3) and DragonFly BSD SEE ALSO
sendmail(8) $Date: 2013-11-22 20:52:00 $ SMRSH(8)