Manpages

floppyd

Name

Note of warning

Description

Floppyd is used as a server to grant access to the floppy drive to clients running on a remote machine, just as an X server grants access to the display to remote clients. It has the following syntax:

floppyd [-d] [-l] [-s port] [-r user] [-b ipaddr] devicename [displaynames]

floppyd is always associated with an X server. It runs on the same machine as its X server, and listens on port 5703 and above.

Authentication

floppyd authenticates remote clients using the Xauthority protocol. Xhost authentication is not supported. Each floppyd is associated with an X server. When a remote client attempts to connect to floppyd, it sends floppyd the X authority record corresponding to floppyd's X server. Floppyd in turn then tries to open up a connection to the X server in order to verify the authenticity of the xauth record. If the connection to the X server succeeds, the client is granted access

Caution: In order to make authentication work correctly, the local host should not be listed in the xhost list of allowed hosts.
 Indeed, hosts listed in xhost do not need a correct Xauthority cookie to connect to the X server. As floppyd runs on the same host as the X server, all its probe connection would succeed even for clients who supplied a bad cookie. This means that your floppy drive would be open to the world, i.e. a huge security hole.
 If your X server does not allow you to remove localhost:0 and :0 from the xhost list, you can prevent floppyd from probing those display names with the -l option.

Command line options

d 

Daemon mode. Floppyd runs its own server loop. Do not supply this if you start floppyd from inetd.conf

s  port 

Port number for deamon mode. Default is 5703 + displaynumber. This flag implies daemon mode. For example, for display hitchhiker:5, the port would be 5708.

b  ipaddr 

Bind address (for multihomed hosts). This flag implies daemon mode

r user 

Run the server under as the given user

l 

Do not generate local default display names

devicename is the name of the device node to be opened. Default is /dev/fd0.

displaynames is a list of display names to connect to for authentication. All displays in the list are tried until one is found that grants access or until the list is exhausted. If no list is supplied, the a display name list based on the ip address supplied using the -b flag is constructed: ipaddr:n.0.

*  :n.0 

 If floppyd is started from inetd, the address of the socket used for stdin is used as a bind address.

 If no bind address is supplied, a list containing the following 3 items is constructed:

*  hostname:n.0 

*  localhost:n.0 

*  :n.0 

 n is the display number derived from the port number (port - 5703 modulo 10). The local items (localhost:0 and :0) are not constructed if the -l flag is given.

Connecting to floppyd

 In order to use floppyd, add the flag remote to the device description in your if~/.mtoolsrcis file. If the flag remote is given, the file parameter of the device description is taken to be a remote address. It's format is the following: hostname:displaynumber[/baseport]. When using this entry, mtools connects to port baseport+displaynumber at hostname. By default baseport is 5703.

Examples:

 The following starts a floppy daemon giving access to if/dev/fd0is, listening on the default port 5703, tied to the default X servers:

floppyd -d /dev/fd0

 Each of the following starts a floppy daemon giving access to if/dev/fd1is, tied to the :1 local X servers, and listening on port 5704. We assume that the local host is named hitchhiker.

floppyd -d /dev/fd0 localhost:1 hitchhiker:1 :1
floppyd -p 5704 /dev/fd0 

 If you want to start floppyd by inetd instead of running it as a  daemon, insert the following lines into if/etc/servicesis:
 

# floppy daemon
floppyd-0    5703/tcp    # floppy daemon for X server :0
floppyd-1    5704/tcp    # floppy daemon for X server :1

 And insert the following into if/etc/inetd.confis (assuming that you have defined a user named floppy in your if/etc/passwdis):

# floppy daemon
floppyd-0   stream  tcp  wait  floppy  /usr/sbin/floppyd floppyd /dev/fd0 
floppyd-1   stream  tcp  wait  floppy  /usr/sbin/floppyd floppyd /dev/fd1

 Note that you need to supply the X display names for the second floppyd. This is because the port is opened by inetd.conf, and hence floppyd cannot know its number to interfere the display number.

 On the client side, insert the following into your if~/.mtoolsrcis to define a drive letter accessing floppy drive in your X terminal:
 

drive x: file="$DISPLAY" remote

See Also

Viewing the texi doc

*   

To generate a printable copy from the texinfo doc, run the following commands:
 

    ./configure; make dvi; dvips mtools.dvi

 

*   

To generate a html copy, run:
 

    ./configure; make html

  A premade html can be found at: ifhttp://mtools.linux.luis and also at: ifhttp://www.tux.org/pub/knaff/mtoolsis

*   

To generate an info copy (browsable using emacs' info mode), run:
 

    ./configure; make info

 

The texinfo doc looks most pretty when printed or as html. Indeed, in the info version certain examples are difficult to read due to the quoting conventions used in info.

Index

Name

Note of warning

Description

Authentication

Command line options

Connecting to floppyd

Examples:

See Also

Viewing the texi doc