send-mail: warning

NoriChung has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello all, I don't understand the error message or the warning as below; can someone fill me in and how to solve it? thank you very much~ send-mail: warning: sendmail is set-uid root, or is run from a set-uid root process

Comment on send-mail: warning

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Re: send-mail: warning by dondelelcaro (Monk) on Aug 15, 2001 at 15:10 UTC
I'm guessing that you are running sendmail 8.12, which is designed not to run setuid-root (although it is set-gid), or your method of calling sendmail is expecting it not to be set-uid root. In order to help you though, it would be useful to know what you're doing when you get this warning and what version of sendmail (or sendmail-replacement) you're using. Otherwise, we'll be pretty hard pressed to help you out.	[reply]
Re: send-mail: warning by Superlman (Pilgrim) on Aug 15, 2001 at 13:04 UTC
I'm nowhere near Linux guru status, but it seems to me to be a security warning. If sendmail has root privilages, any exploit which is used against it could run on your system with root privilages. If sendmail is running as, say, nobody, than it will only have the powers that nobody does, and thus will be unable to compromise your system more severely. I may, of course, be completely mistaken, in which case I'm sure someone more knowledgable will LART me.	[reply]