Setting date/time without being root user?

This is what the setuid flag is for.  For background, look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setuid

You can either log in as root and execute:
chmod ug+s `which date`

Or write a script and chmod your script as root to add the suid bit -- just watch out for injection attacks by your users.

There's nothing wrong or unsafe with sudo providing you define the commands that need to be run correctly.

Why not just setup NTP?

The whole network, albeit small, is mostly "black box" machines running in locked equipment rooms. The few users will be on Windows machines, connected via a secure network protocol. All the systems need to perform logging and for that a reliable time source is required - and the fact that the time has changed needs to be logged. Also, as I said before, it's a SIL2 system. All this is why an NTP server cannot be used.

Setuid looks good. One of my programmers says it's potentially unsafe though - but it might be a case of "you said black, so I'll say white" - his only suggested alternative was to use "chroot jail" which, from first glance, seems to be a wide open invitation to abuse.

So, any issues with setuid I ought to be aware of?

Thanks

setuid programs should do as little as possible other than the specific task they are written for. For instance, they can fill a filesystem completely full (regular users are subject to a margin). Otherwise, they're fine.

Writing a good/safe setuid program is a lot harder than defining a sensible sudo rule.

I don't see how setting date as setuid is less safe than allowing any user to run date through sudo -- if there is a security flaw in the date program, you are exposed either way.

As far as I can see, there is only one benefit to allowing sudo for this case - you can restrict which users are allowed to set the date.  If you setuid date then any user can exploit a security flaw, but the choice is yours...  Info on editing sudoers using visudo is here: http://www.gratisoft.us/sudo/man/visudo.html

Point being is that the code for date (or any other common command) has been around for a very, very long time, so the chance of any exploits in the code are very low compared to writing a setuid program from scratch.

Admittedly, as setting the date is such a simple operation, there's not really that much you can do wrong writing your own program, but it's still possible to write exploitable simple setuid programs.

Ok, bear in mind this is a small, closed system with controlled access in locked rooms. All we want to do is call the date command to set the system date and time. If there is a way to do it programmatically instead of calling a system command, then so much the better - especially if it avoids all this aggro.

Ok, I'll take your word for it. There appear to be two conflicting arguments and I wanted to know the pros and cons of each approach.

Thanks anyway.