[sudo-workers] Modifying sudo to not require setuid

[sbaugh at catern.com]

Hi sudo-devel,

For a variety of reasons I would like to use sudo, but I would like it
not to require that the sudo binary be setuid root.

One could (theoretically) achieve this by changing the sudo binary to be
a small client which makes an IPC call over AF_UNIX to a privileged
sudod running as root. Authentication can happen with SO_PASSCRED on
Linux or equivalents on other operating systems.

Do you think it would be possible to adapt sudo to work like this
without an extreme amount of trouble? Perhaps this could be achieved
with just a thin hack? Or at least only a moderate amount of trouble?

The reason I want this is, I want to be able to run a conventional Unix
system without any use of the setuid bit on files. And naturally I don't
want to give up sudo.

If this isn't possible as laid out here, I would welcome alternative
suggestions or ideas or relevant information!

Thanks!