Using SSH as "su"-substitute

Ph. Marek marek at bmlv.gv.at
Tue Jun 25 18:27:24 EST 2002


Hello everybody!

I'd like to present a feature wish: using ssh as a substitue for su.
Of course, if I have a forwarding agent (or the correct key) I can simply do a
	ssh -l <other_user> localhost
but that's not really optimal - the environment gets lost as I'm newly logged 
in, agent forwarding has one more hop to traverse, the data is once more 
en/decrypted, ...

So I propose a new ssu tool which uses the current ssh-agent (or key in the 
filesystem) to verify authorization to su to another user (without using a 
password). Alternatively it may be possible (at least on some systems) to use 
a PAM-Module which does this.

Usage:
	ssu [-] [Username] [-i identityFile] [-c command]

It has the verification part of sshd and the frontend of ssh.


Comments?



Regards,

Phil




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