Problems with setuid app in Ubuntu 12.04

[Paul Smith]

Hi all.  I've recently installed Ubuntu 12.04 64bit.

I'm using a proprietary VPN utility from Juniper Networks on my Linux
system.  In previous versions of Ubuntu, it worked just fine.  In the
current version of Ubuntu, I'm getting failures.  For some reason it's
not letting me invoke a setuid application.

The way it is deployed is it unpacks into a hidden directory under
$HOME, then the main VPN program needs to be made setuid root so that it
can be invoked by me but do root-y things.  I've done all this.

Then, you can either run the tool directly from the command line or you
can run a little Java UI control window which manages the VPN.  If I run
the program directly from the command line, the setuid works and the VPN
comes up and works fine.  But, I can't control it or see how long it's
been up.

Whenever I try to use the Java control panel the GUI comes up and tries
to run the setuid program, but it fails and then the whole thing
crashes.  I get this error:

  Failed to setuid to root. Error 1: Operation not permitted

But I have clearly set the right bits and it works when invoked
directly.  I've tried many different variations of Java including
downloaded ones directly from Sun/Oracle.

One note, the application is 32bit and provides a 32bit .so that is
linked into the Java UI, so I need to run 32bit Java as well.  Not sure
if that matters.

Has the 12.04 release installed some new security measures that might be
keeping my setuid program from working properly?  I've tried putting
Java under /opt/jvm and also run "service apparmor teardown" to try to
be sure apparmor is not involved, but I don't know enough to know if I
succeeded.

I'm really stuck and could use any pointers or tips anyone has.