Enable/Disable Setuid (The GNU C Library)

### 31.8 Enabling and Disabling Setuid Access ¶

A typical setuid program does not need its special access all of the time. It’s a good idea to turn off this access when it isn’t needed, so it can’t possibly give unintended access.

If the system supports the `_POSIX_SAVED_IDS` feature, you can accomplish this with `seteuid`. When the game program starts, its real user ID is `jdoe`, its effective user ID is `games`, and its saved user ID is also `games`. The program should record both user ID values once at the beginning, like this:

    user_user_id = getuid ();
    game_user_id = geteuid ();

Then it can turn off game file access with

    seteuid (user_user_id);

and turn it on with

    seteuid (game_user_id);

Throughout this process, the real user ID remains `jdoe` and the file user ID remains `games`, so the program can always set its effective user ID to either one.

On other systems that don’t support file user IDs, you can turn setuid access on and off by using `setreuid` to swap the real and effective user IDs of the process, as follows:

    setreuid (geteuid (), getuid ());

This special case is always allowed—it cannot fail.

Why does this have the effect of toggling the setuid access? Suppose a game program has just started, and its real user ID is `jdoe` while its effective user ID is `games`. In this state, the game can write the scores file. If it swaps the two uids, the real becomes `games` and the effective becomes `jdoe`; now the program has only `jdoe` access. Another swap brings `games` back to the effective user ID and restores access to the scores file.

In order to handle both kinds of systems, test for the saved user ID feature with a preprocessor conditional, like this:

    #ifdef _POSIX_SAVED_IDS
      seteuid (user_user_id);
    #else
      setreuid (geteuid (), getuid ());
    #endif