pidentd
("Peter's Ident Daemon" or is it "Portable Ident Daemon"?)
Peter Eriksson <pen@lysator.liu.se>
This program is released into the public domain and can be used by
anyone who wants to. Vendors may include it into their distributions
if they want to without any restrictions. (Although it would be nice
to be notified by email if someone decides to do that, and/or a note
somewhere about who wrote this program. Like in the man-page or so.. :-)
This is a program that implements the RFC1413 identification server. It
was very much inspired by Dan Bernstein's original 'authd' (but unlike
that program doesn't use 'netstat' to get some of the information) It
uses the kernel information directly. (And is due to that fact a lot
faster). Dan has now written another version of the 'authd' daemon that
uses his 'kstuff' to read the kernel information. Unlike that daemon,
this will use only normally available kernel access functions (and is due
to that more limited in the different machines it support). Please note
that this daemon used to be called pauthd but has changed name to better
reflect what it does (and to conform to the new RFC).
This daemon has been tested on the following machines/OS (please report
to me if you've tested a newer version, or if your machine/OS isn't among
the ones below):
Machine Operating System Pidentd version
---------------------- ---------------------- --------------------------
Sequent Balance Dynix 3.0.14 2.1beta.12
Sequent Symmetry Dynix 3.1.2 2.1beta.3
Sun 3/50 SunOS 3.5 2.1beta.8.1 (3)
Sun 386i SunOS 4.0.2 1.9beta
Sun 2/120 SunOS 4.0.3 2.1beta.10
Sun 3/280 SunOS 4.1.1 2.1beta.12
Sun 4/380 SunOS 4.1.3 2.1beta.12
Sun SS1/41 SunOS 5.1 2.1beta.11
HP 9000/375 HP-UX 7.0 2.1beta.10.1 (1)
HP 9000/300 HP-UX 8.0 2.1beta.12
HP 9000/340 HP-UX 8.0 2.1beta.10.1
HP 9000/360 HP-UX 8.0 2.1beta.10.1
HP 9000/710 HP-UX 8.07 2.1beta.10.1
HP 9000/720 HP-UX 8.07 2.1beta.10.1
HP 9000/715 HP-UX 9.0 2.1beta.9.1
HP 9000/827 HP-UX 8.02 2.1beta.8.1
HP 9000/834 HP-UX 7.0 2.0beta.4
HP 9000/835 HP-UX 8.00 2.1beta.10.1
MIPS RISC/OS 4.5x 2.1beta.8.1
DECstation 2100 Ultrix 4.2-96 2.1beta.2 (2)
DECstation 5000/133 Ultrix 4.2 2.1beta.9.1 (2) [?]
DEC VAXstation 2000 Ultrix-32 3.1 2.1beta.12 (2) [?]
DEC VAX vs3520 Ultrix 3.0 2.1beta.9.1 (2) [?]
DEC VAX 11/780 4.3BSD Reno 2.1beta.12 (2)
i486-PC UHC SVR4 2.0 2.0beta.4 (2)
i486-PC Dell SVR4 2.2 2.0beta.4 (2)
i486-PC ESIX SVR4 4.0.4 2.1beta.2 (2)
i486-PC 386BSD 0.1 2.1beta.3 (2)
Cray UNICOS 6.0.12 2.1beta.7
NeXT NeXTSTEP 2.1 2.1beta.9.1 (3)
NeXT NeXTSTEP 3.0 2.1beta.9.1 (3)
Pyramid 90x dualPort OSx 4.1 2.1beta.12
Silicon Graphics IRIX 4 2.1beta.10
Notes:
1) HP-UX 7.0 doesn't support running streams based services from
Inetd with the "wait" option (and the "-w" flag to Pidentd).
It also has problems with starting stuff as user "sys" from Inetd.
(It doesn't correctly set the group id to "sys") so I suggest you
either starts it as user "root" and use the "-u" and "-g" flags
to setuid and setgid itself to user "sys", group "sys", or do a
'chgrp sys in.identd' and then a 'chmod g+s in.identd' and start
it as user "sys" from Inetd.
2) These systems also doesn't support running streams based
services from Inetd with the "wait" option.
3) See notes in the READMEs/README.<machine-type> specific files.
Please let me know if you find any bugs, or have ported it to other
machines (and care to share the changes with me and the world!).
See the manual page for information about the various command line
options that are available.
NOTE: One should NOT use the -d option when using it for normal use!
If you intend to create or modify daemons that use the IDENT protocol
then you may wish to get the "libident" library that contains some
functions to implement the client side of this protocol. It is available
as "libident-*.tar.Z" in "pub/ident/libs" at "ftp.lysator.liu.se".
There is a mailing list for users of the IDENT(RFC1413)/TAP protocol called
'ident-users@lysator.liu.se' that you may want to consider joining.
Send mail to the address 'ident-users-request@lysator.liu.se' to
join it. This list is intended for generic discussions on using this
protocol and it's associated tools.
If you only want to receive news about new (non-alpha/beta) releases of
Pidentd then you can join the 'ident-announce@lysator.liu.se' mailing
list. Send mail to the address 'ident-announce-request@lysator.liu.se' to
join it. No discussions will take place on this list.
I also run a small mailing list for people who wants to act as testers
of new alpha/beta-versions of Pidentd. If you wish to join, please send
mail to the address 'pidentd-testers-request@lysator.liu.se'. (I can always
use more testers, so don't hesitate :-)
It's a human (namely me :-) that reads the letters sent to *-request.
Please include the full email address to which to wish to have the
letters sent.
I'm grateful for success/failure stories about installing/compiling this
daemon...
Information of interrest:
1. Machine and operating system type and version.
2. Command line flags.
3. Inetd.conf configuration.
4. Did it work, or not. And if not - what did it report to the
syslog file? (You'll have to add the "-l" option and probably
reconfigure your Syslogd). If you use the "-d" option then
you can see a verbose error if you Telnet into it directly and
send it a query manually. (See the INSTALL file for more information).
/Peter Eriksson <pen@lysator.liu.se>, 5 April 1993
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