PFSYSEUID and RHEL 5

[Ron Kracht]

On Monday 08 June 2009 10:43:13 pm Fairlight wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 08, 2009 at 04:34:53PM -0400, after drawing runes in goat's
> blood,
>
> Ron Kracht cast forth these immortal, mystical words:
> > Almost correct. filePro's system command calls /bin/sh  unless an
> > alternate shell has been specified through the use of the environment
> > variable PFSHELL.
>
> I thought Ken said a few years back that it used system().  Could be
> mistaken.  When was PFSHELL introduced?  It's not in the 4.8 docs.  This is
> actually the first I've heard of it.
>
> So what are you doing, a fork, then exec of the shell along with the rest
> of the actual command line?
>
> mark->


With the exception of a little manipulation of the signal handling surrounding 
the procedure you describe that is exactly what is being done.  

I remember the discussion surrounding this change but couldn't say from my own 
recollection when they were made.  The comments in the code however indicate 
this means of handing the SYSTEM command was a 4.9 change and that PFSHELL was 
a feature Ken added to 5.6.  Given the way the change was added though PFSHELL 
should also be respected in 5.0.15 since they are compiled from a common code 
base and the code does not in this instance restrict the change to 5.6 or 
greater.

Ron