First, I'm not really sure what nmap is. That's probably not too important.

Second, I'm not sure what a root-only binary is doing in /usr/bin. It should be in /usr/sbin. So that's a bit odd.

Finally, you want sudo. It provides the ability to allow a user (e.g., "wwwrun" or "apache" or whatever your server drops privileges to) to become another user (e.g., 'root') to run specific programs (e.g., "/usr/bin/nmap"), optionally (well, mandatory for you) without providing a password.

my $output = `sudo /usr/bin/nmap -sU -p 2300,6500 $ENV{'REMOTE_ADDR'}`
+;

[download]

Note that setting the suid bit is not enough unless the program is written to take advantage of the bit.

Update: Not sure what I'm on. I still prefer sudo to set-uid.

In reply to Re: Capturing the output of nmap from within a Perl script by Tanktalus
in thread Capturing the output of nmap from within a Perl script by spaceout

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