klaptopdaemon and SUID permissions ---------------------------------- To allow ordinary users to control certain power management features, klaptopdaemon's panel in the Trinity Control Center has a button which prompts the user to enter the root password (Trinity Control Center --> Power Control --> Laptop Battery, then the ACPI Config tab, then the Setup Helper Application button). This button changes the permissions of /usr/bin/klaptop_acpi_helper from "0755 root.root" to "6755 root.root", and therefore grants all regular users extra power management abilities. This has obvious security implications, and should not be done on any system where all users are not trusted absolutely. The standard klaptopdaemon changes the binary's permissions using chmod. However, if an updated version of the Debian klaptopdaemon package were then to be installed, it would reset the permissions, forcing the sysadmin to reconfigure after each upgrade. The Debian package has therefore been patched to use dpkg-statoverride to permanently change the permissions of /usr/bin/klaptop_acpi_helper. The override is removed and permissions reset if the package is removed or purged. However, if the sysadmin wishes to remove the special permissions of /usr/bin/klaptop_acpi_helper, they can do so at any time by issuing, as root, the following commands: dpkg-statoverride --remove /usr/bin/klaptop_acpi_helper chown root:root /usr/bin/klaptop_acpi_helper chmod 0755 /usr/bin/klaptop_acpi_helper