Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 18 Apr 2000 20:55:43 -0500
From:      "C. Stephen Gunn" <csg@waterspout.com>
To:        freebsd-arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Outdated rdist in FreeBSD Base 
Message-ID:  <200004190155.UAA05370@dustdevil.waterspout.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 18 Apr 2000 22:46:32 %2B0100." <200004182146.WAA00579@hak.lan.Awfulhak.org> 

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Tue, 18 Apr 2000 22:46:32 +0100, Brian Somers wrote:

> It's been a while, but AFAIR I needed to install rdist6 because I 
> *couldn't* run rdist over ssh !

I know rdist6 works pretty well over ssh.

> I think that big gaping hole is an anti-hole !

I just checked the FreeBSD repo and found this log message:

----------------------------
revision 1.5
date: 1996/08/10 07:54:12;  author: peter;  state: Exp;  lines: +60 -5
Remove the need for rdist(1) to run setuid, thus completely closing any
possibility of a security hole.  It now does what rdist-6 does, and calls
/usr/bin/rsh if not running as root.  There are NO protocol changes, this
is 100% compatable with the old rdist, except that it does not need setuid
root privs.

However, there are some minor differences to the base rdist-6 code in that
if it is being run by root, it will call rcmd(3) directly rather than
piping everything through rsh(1).  This is a little more efficient as it
doesn't involve context switching on pipe reads/writes.

Also, the -P option was added from rdist-6.1.2, which allows an alternative
rsh program to be specified, such as ssh.  Note that it requires the fixes
to the ssh port to disable the unconditional USE_PIPES option that was
recently added.  The rcmd(3) optimisation is disabled if a non-rsh program
is speficied.
----------------------------

Looks like our rdist(1) was safer/smarter than I thought as well.

 - Steve

--
C. Stephen Gunn                          URL: http://www.waterspout.com/
WaterSpout Communications, Inc.        Email: csg@waterspout.com
427 North 6th Street                   Phone: +1 765.742.6628
Lafayette, IN  47901                     Fax: +1 765.742.0646




To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200004190155.UAA05370>