[Note: nothing new from Carl's release except it is now quadfat]


NOTE: This archive was compressed using GNU gzip.  Gzip achieves
considerably better compression rates and higher decompression speeds
than compress, but it is not installed on NeXTs by default.  You can
get it from prep.ai.mit.edu and many other fine anon ftp sites.

        Asroot
        ======

This is the first (and presumably only) public release of a trivial
little utility which I've been using for some years.  Asroot allows
any member of the group wheel to execute any program as if he was
root.  This utility has saved me countless logouts and logins.


Asroot does not open up a larger security hole than using the su.wheel
program as shipped by NeXT.  Still, before installing asroot do a quick

        nidump group .

first.  If there is a user in the group wheel (or whatever you call
the group with GID 0) on your machine whom you would not give your
root password either throw him out of the group wheel or don't install
asroot.


For more details (such as they are), see the man page.  To make
asroot, just

        make

To install it and its man page in the /usr/local hierarchy,

        su
        make install


BTW, there is absolutely nothing in this program which makes it
specific to root.  If you want a utility which allows all members of
the group wheel to execute programs as if they were the user 'news':

        cp asroot asnews
        chown news.news asnews
        chmod 4755 asnews

The same can of course be done for any other user or group.


        Carl Edman                                         5-14-93
        <cedman@princeton.edu>
