Brad Teale wrote:
>
> I was wondering why the specifications for the ldm say to chown rpc.ldmd to
> root. If the ldm is registered with the portmaper (/etc/rpc), then the
> portmaper specifies which port ldm will be using. Also, if ldm uses rpc,
> why are we specifying the 388 port in the /etc/services file?
>
> I am asking because, when I run rpc.ldmd as the ldm user, my pqact and
> pqbinstats programs start-up and run great. Where as, if rpc.ldmd is
> chowned to root, they never start and no errors are produced.
>
> Thanks,
> Brad Teale
> Universal Weather & Aviation, Inc.
> <mailto:bteale@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> 713-944-1440 ext. 3623
Brad,
For some historical reason, it was decided that the ldm would use one of
the hard-wired, system service ports (ports less than 1024) rather than
relying on the portmapper. I believe the ldm will run using the
portmapper service if it doesn't have access to port 388.
Simply listing the ldm in /etc/services and ldmd in /etc/rpc doesn't by
itself allow the ldm to get to the port. My understanding is that those
files serve mostly to map from numbers to strings for informational
purposes. The ldm still needs root priveleges to get port 388.
Our standard installation has rpc.ldmd owned by root and setuid root,
and expects the ldm to be started via user ldm. The idea is that the
ldm has root priveleges temporarily, just long enough to get port 388,
then it reverts back to ldm level priveleges because it was invoked by
user ldm. This is what the permissions should look like on rpc.ldmd:
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root ustaff 441385 Sep 8 10:54 rpc.ldmd*
This has worked for us on many sparc workstations.
Were you originally invoking the ldm as root? If you were, it possible
that root will not exec programs that it suspects are unsafe. Were
there any messages in the system log?
Also, it is better to send questions of this nature to
support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, rather than to this list. Please respond to
me directly.
Thanks!
Anne
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Anne Wilson UCAR Unidata Program
anne@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx P.O. Box 3000
Boulder, CO 80307
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