"su" insists on stdin being a tty even if no password is required

[L. Peter Deutsch]

This is true in version 2.0.11, which ships with Red Hat Linux 7.2.
Whatever earlier version shipped with Red Hat Linux 5.1 did not require a
tty in the case of no password.

The reason I care is that I want to put some buttons on my desktop that
executed commands under particular non-passworded user identities.  Such
things worked fine before I upgraded, but they don't work now.

Is this change supposed to be a "feature"?  Is there a way (other than
trying to locate some old version of su) to work around it?

-- 

L. Peter Deutsch     |    Aladdin Enterprises   |  203 Santa Margarita Ave.
address@hidden    |  http://www.aladdin.com  |  Menlo Park, CA 94025

        The future of software is at http://www.opensource.org