[comp.unix.i386] SCO Unix inetd.conf trouble -- please help!

tih@barsoom.nhh.no (Tom Ivar Helbekkmo) (06/03/90)

I've got a pretty annoying problem with SCO TCP/IP 1.1.0 under SCO
Unix V/386 3.2.0 here...  There's a known bug in the TCP/IP support
stuff that makes a process started from an rc script run without
"login authentication".  This means that the process won't be able to
run any setuid/setgid programs, because the system doesn't trust it or
something.  The workaround is that you explicitly say "su root -c
command" to run the daemon in question.

OK, so I installed NNTP support.  Now, nntpd has to run rnews, which
is setuid news.  No go, of course, so I tried running inetd with an
explicit su root.  (The same thing is achieved when you kill the
existing inetd process, and restart it while logged in as root.)  Ah,
it worked!  Great!  But of course, a few other things failed...  :-(
After this change, I can't telnet or ftp into the system, because it
won't accept the login information.  This is probably some hack in the
code that's supposed to keep you from accidentally giving users root
privs when telnetting or ftping into the box.

So, what can I do?  Has anyone else had this problem, and found a way
to work it out?  I guess the thing to do is to get hold of PD versions
of telnetd and ftpd and use those -- at least I don't expect SCO to do
anything about it...  :-(

-tih
-- 
Tom Ivar Helbekkmo, NHH, Bergen, Norway.  Telephone: +47-5-959205
tih@barsoom.nhh.no, thelbekk@norunit.bitnet, edb_tom@debet.nhh.no

tih@barsoom.nhh.no (Tom Ivar Helbekkmo) (06/03/90)

I wrote:
>I've got a pretty annoying problem with SCO TCP/IP 1.1.0 under SCO
>Unix V/386 3.2.0 here...  There's a known bug in the TCP/IP support
>stuff that makes a process started from an rc script run without
>"login authentication".  This means that the process won't be able to
>run any setuid/setgid programs, because the system doesn't trust it or
>something.  The workaround is that you explicitly say "su root -c
>command" to run the daemon in question.

...and I went on to describe how I couldn't make nntpd and
telnetd/ftpd work at the same time, because the former wants inetd to
be started with "su root -c inetd", while the latter two don't like
that at all.  I've figured out what to do; it turned out that the
nntpd could run standalone, without invocation through inetd.  This is
OK, except that I've got another process running all the time, taking
up memory.  Not a big deal, though.

Anyway, it doesn't solve the original problem.  So, has anyone got any
idea about what a process can do when it's been invoked from inetd
under SCO Unix, and wants to run a setuid program?  Or, better yet,
does anyone have telnetd and/or ftpd sources that are compilable under
SCO Unix?  I've looked at the free BSD stuff, but it'll take some work
to get those up and running, they're very BSD specific...

-tih
-- 
Tom Ivar Helbekkmo, NHH, Bergen, Norway.  Telephone: +47-5-959205
tih@barsoom.nhh.no, thelbekk@norunit.bitnet, edb_tom@debet.nhh.no