Firstly, this patch fixes a bug whereby a malicious user could create a symlink in the Stunnel pid directory pointing to a file that is writable by the user invoking Stunnel, thus truncating and overwriting the file. This could lead to data destruction. The second purpose of this patch is to allow you to specify where and if a pid file should be created. A new flag, '-P' is added to stunnel that works as follows: -P /path/to/pid/dir/ Create the pid file in the directory named. Note that you *MUST* specify a trailing slash for this method. -P /path/to/pid/file.pid Create the pid file with the filename specified (no trailing slash) -P none Don't create a pid file at all. Changes: stunnel will now require that it can create the pid file. If it cannot, it will stop. Thus users may need to start using the '-P none' option.