NAME

       Privileges::Drop - A module to make it simple to drop all privileges, even POSIX groups.

DESCRIPTION

       This module tries to simplify the process of dropping privileges. This can be useful when
       your Perl program needs to bind to privileged ports, etc. This module is much like
       Proc::UID, except that it's implemented in pure Perl.  Special care has been taken to also
       drop saved uid on platforms that support this, currently only test on on Linux.

SYNOPSIS

         use Privileges::Drop;

         # Do privileged stuff

         # Drops privileges and sets euid/uid to 1000 and egid/gid to 1000.
         drop_uidgid(1000, 1000);

         # Drop privileges to user nobody looking up gid and uid with getpwname
         # This also set the environment variables USER, LOGNAME, HOME and SHELL.
         drop_privileges('nobody');

METHODS

       drop_uidgid($uid, $gid, @groups)
           Drops privileges and sets euid/uid to $uid and egid/gid to $gid.

           Supplementary groups can be set in @groups.

       drop_privileges($user)
           Drops privileges to the $user, looking up gid and uid with getpwname and calling
           drop_uidgid() with these arguments.

           The environment variables USER, LOGNAME, HOME and SHELL are also set to the values
           returned by getpwname.

           Returns the $uid and $gid on success and dies on error.

           NOTE: If drop_privileges() is called when you don't have root privileges it will just
           return undef;

NOTES

       As this module only uses Perl's built-in functions, it relies on them to work correctly.
       That means setting $GID and $EGID should also call setgroups(), something that might not
       have been the case before Perl 5.004. So if you are running an older version, Proc::UID
       might be a better choice.

AUTHOR

       Troels Liebe Bentsen <tlb@rapanden.dk>

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright(C) 2007-2009 Troels Liebe Bentsen

       This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
       terms as Perl itself.