• @AVincentInSpace
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    6 months ago

    and whether they should always have root (admin) perms.

    Not quite! The setuid bit means the file will be run as its owner, not necessarily as root. The most common use for this (which is used by sudo) is to have the file owned by root and executable by everyone, so that when anyone runs it it will run as root, but you can also use it to have a program always run as any user (thus limiting what it’s allowed to do). There’s also a setgid bit so it will be run as its owning group, which is less frequently used. Fun fact!