How does AIR manage to install itself with root privileges?

[jfernyhough]

(I'll post this here as I'm not sure of the best place - mods feel free to move it)

So I thought I'd give the BBC iPlayer desktop application a go. It uses AIR and once you've gone through and set the prerequisite cookie and found a programme to download it asks whether to install AIR. Which it does. In /opt.

Hence, my question is this:

How the hell does a Flash applet running with my credentials manage to install an application to /opt ?

[mister_pink]

Bearing in mind I have used neither of these applications, I can only imagine that when air is installed with root priviledges it uses setuid to enable it to install other applications as root. basically setuid means that anyone can run a specific program as though they were whatever user owns that program.

[Sealbhach]

Hence, my question is this:

How the hell does a Flash applet running with my credentials manage to install an application to /opt ?

You mean Ubuntu doesn't ask for your password?


.

[jfernyhough]

You mean Ubuntu doesn't ask for your password?Yes, sorry, probably should have mentioned that. It didn't on both machines I installed it on, but whether this was due to running Synaptic relatively recently...

I'm trying to test it again now but it doesn't seem to want to work. :D The applet just sits there with a constantly moving stripy progress bar...

I'll try some other things.

[Vadi]

Adobe AIR does ask for the password.

sudo, however, remembers it for 15 mins by default. If you gave your password recently, it won't bug you again. There's a setting to change this if you'd like, but air does nothing fishy here.

[jfernyhough]

Ah, then that's fine.

I did start to wonder, though. :D

[Vadi]

And that is good behavior :)