Thanks for taking the time to explain this in such detail. So basically you are saying get rid of my little hack script because it adds a vulnerability. OK, I'll buy that. And you suggested earlier using a daemon to validate requests to make changes to root files instead. Now, I obviously don't have the talent (nor the year it would probably take me to learn how) to write something like that. Is there some tool or module already out like that that would allow me safely automate updates to my /etc/hosts file? Or do you recommend I just update it manually as I'm doing now with sudo vim?

I do want to learn to do this properly because eventually I'd like to be able to run scripts that update things like apache config files (owned by root) on a live server. I'd like to figure out what it takes to do this kind of thing without introducing security holes.

Thanks again.

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In reply to Re^11: Best way to write to a file owned by root? by nysus
in thread Best way to write to a file owned by root? by nysus

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