rstartd - Online in the Cloud

PROGRAM:

NAME

rstartd - a sample implementation of a Remote Start rsh helper

SYNOPSIS

rstartd

rstartd.real [-c configfilename]

DESCRIPTION

Rstartd is an implementation of a Remote Start "helper" as defined in "A Flexible Remote
Execution Protocol Based on rsh".

This document describes the peculiarities of rstartd and how it is configured.

OPTIONS

-c configfilename
This option specifies the "global" configuration file that rstartd is to read.
Normally, rstartd is a shell script that invokes rstartd.real with the -c switch,
allowing local configuration of the location of the configuration file. If
rstartd.real is started without the -c option, it reads /X11/rstart/config.

INSTALLATION

It is critical to successful interoperation of the Remote Start protocol that rstartd be
installed in a directory which is in the "default" search path, so that default rsh
requests and the ilk will be able to find it.

CONFIGURATION AND OPERATION

Rstartd is by design highly configurable. One would like things like configuration file
locations to be fixed, so that users and administrators can find them without searching,
but reality is that no two vendors will agree on where things should go, and nobody thinks
the original location is "right". Thus, rstartd allows one to relocate all of its files
and directories.

Rstartd has a hierarchy of configuration files which are executed in order when a request
is made. They are:
global config
per-user ("local") config
global per-context config
per-user ("local") per-context config
config from request
As you might guess from the presence of "config from request", all of the config files are
in the format of an rstart request. Rstartd defines a few additional keywords with the
INTERNAL- prefix for specifying its configuration.

Rstartd starts by reading and executing the global config file. This file will normally
specify the locations of the other configuration files and any systemwide defaults.

Rstartd will then read the user's local config file, default name $HOME/.rstart.

Rstartd will then start interpreting the request.

Presumably one of the first lines in the request will be a CONTEXT line. The context name
is converted to lower case.

Rstartd will read the global config file for that context, default name
/usr/lib/X11/rstart/contexts/<name>, if any.

It will then read the user's config file for that context, default name
$HOME/.rstart.contexts/<name>, if any.

(If neither of these exists, rstartd aborts with a Failure message.)

Rstartd will finish interpreting the request, and execute the program specified.

This allows the system administrator and the user a large degree of control over the
operation of rstartd. The administrator has final say, because the global config file
doesn't need to specify a per-user config file. If it does, however, the user can
override anything from the global file, and can even completely replace the global context
config files.

The config files have a somewhat more flexible format than requests do; they are allowed
to contain blank lines and lines beginning with "#" are comments and ignored. (#s in the
middle of lines are data, not comment markers.)

Any commands run are provided a few useful pieces of information in environment variables.
The exact names are configurable, but the supplied defaults are:

$RSTART_CONTEXT
$RSTART_GLOBAL_CONTEXTS the global contexts directory
$RSTART_LOCAL_CONTEXTS the local contexts directory
$RSTART_GLOBAL_COMMANDS the global generic commands directory
$RSTART_LOCAL_COMMANDS the local generic commands directory

$RSTART_{GLOBAL,LOCAL}_CONTEXTS should contain one special file, @List, which contains a
list of the contexts in that directory in the format specified for ListContexts. The
supplied version of ListContexts will cat both the global and local copies of @List.

Generic commands are searched for in several places: (defaults)
per-user per-context directory ($HOME/.rstart.commands/<context>)
global per-context directory (/usr/lib/X11/rstart/commands/<context>)
per-user all-contexts directory ($HOME/.rstart.commands)
global all-contexts directory (/usr/lib/X11/rstart/commands)
(Yes, this means you can't have an all-contexts generic command with the same name as a
context. It didn't seem like a big deal.)

Each of these directories should have a file called @List that gives the names and
descriptions of the commands in that directory in the format specified for
ListGenericCommands.

CONFIGURATION KEYWORDS

There are several "special" rstart keywords defined for rstartd configuration. Unless
otherwise specified, there are no defaults; related features are disabled in this case.

INTERNAL-REGISTRIES name ...
Gives a space-separated list of "MISC" registries that this system understands.
(Registries other than this are accepted but generate a Warning.)

INTERNAL-LOCAL-DEFAULT relative_filename
Gives the name ($HOME relative) of the per-user config file.

INTERNAL-GLOBAL-CONTEXTS absolute_directory_name
Gives the name of the system-wide contexts directory.

INTERNAL-LOCAL-CONTEXTS relative_directory_name
Gives the name ($HOME relative) of the per-user contexts directory.

INTERNAL-GLOBAL-COMMANDS absolute_directory_name
Gives the name of the system-wide generic commands directory.

INTERNAL-LOCAL-COMMANDS relative_directory_name
Gives the name ($HOME relative) of the per-user generic commands directory.

INTERNAL-VARIABLE-PREFIX prefix
Gives the prefix for the configuration environment variables rstartd passes to its
kids.

INTERNAL-AUTH-PROGRAM authscheme program argv[0] argv[1] ...
Specifies the program to run to set up authentication for the specified
authentication scheme. "program argv[0] ..." gives the program to run and its
arguments, in the same form as the EXEC keyword.

INTERNAL-AUTH-INPUT authscheme
Specifies the data to be given to the authorization program as its standard input.
Each argument is passed as a single line. $n, where n is a number, is replaced by
the n'th argument to the "AUTH authscheme arg1 arg2 ..." line.

INTERNAL-PRINT arbitrary text
Prints its arguments as a Debug message. Mostly for rstartd debugging, but could
be used to debug config files.

NOTES

When using the C shell, or any other shell which runs a script every time the shell is
started, the script may get run several times. In the worst case, the script may get run
three times:
By rsh, to run rstartd
By rstartd, to run the specified command
By the command, eg xterm
rstartd currently limits lines, both from config files and requests, to BUFSIZ bytes.

DETACH is implemented by redirecting file descriptors 0,1, and 2 to /dev/null and forking
before executing the program.

CMD is implemented by invoking $SHELL (default /bin/sh) with "-c" and the specified
command as arguments.

POSIX-UMASK is implemented in the obvious way.

The authorization programs are run in the same context as the target program - same
environment variables, path, etc. Long term this might be a problem.

In the X context, GENERIC-CMD Terminal runs xterm. In the OpenWindows context, GENERIC-
CMD Terminal runs cmdtool.

In the X context, GENERIC-CMD LoadMonitor runs xload. In the OpenWindows context,
GENERIC-CMD LoadMonitor runs perfmeter.

GENERIC-CMD ListContexts lists the contents of @List in both the system-wide and per-user
contexts directories. It is available in all contexts.

GENERIC-CMD ListGenericCommands lists the contents of @List in the system-wide and per-
user commands directories, including the per-context subdirectories for the current
context. It is available in all contexts.

CONTEXT None is not implemented.

CONTEXT Default is really dull.

For installation ease, the "contexts" directory in the distribution contains a file
"@Aliases" which lists a context name and aliases for that context. This file is used to
make symlinks in the contexts and commands directories.

All MISC values are passed unmodified as environment variables.

One can mistreat rstartd in any number of ways, resulting in anything from stupid behavior
to core dumps. Other than by explicitly running programs I don't think it can write or
delete any files, but there's no guarantee of that. The important thing is that (a) it
probably won't do anything REALLY stupid and (b) it runs with the user's permissions, so
it can't do anything catastrophic.

@List files need not be complete; contexts or commands which are dull or which need not or
should not be advertised need not be listed. In particular, per-user @List files should
not list things which are in the system-wide @List files. In the future, perhaps
ListContexts and ListGenericCommands will automatically suppress lines from the system-
wide files when there are per-user replacements for those lines.

Error handling is OK to weak. In particular, no attempt is made to properly report errors
on the exec itself. (Perversely, exec errors could be reliably reported when detaching,
but not when passing the stdin/out socket to the app.)

If compiled with -DODT1_DISPLAY_HACK, rstartd will work around a bug in SCO ODT version 1.
(1.1?) (The bug is that the X clients are all compiled with a bad library that doesn't
know how to look host names up using DNS. The fix is to look up a host name in $DISPLAY
and substitute an IP address.) This is a trivial example of an incompatibility that
rstart can hide.

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