I am using several Mandrake 7.1 systems and everything seems to work
except for the following. When I telnet or ssh into one of these
systems I get the following error message:
Couldnt get a file descriptor referring to the console
The cause of the problem is the dumpkeys command in the
/etc/profife.d/inputrc.csh
script (dumpkeys is not executed when bash is the shell so only users
of the tcsh see it). Note you only get the error message when remotely
(telnet, ssh) log on to the system. As root dumpkeys works on either
kernel so
chmod 4711 /usr/bin/dumpkeys
solves the problem, but this is a solution - security wise - I do not
like. When I strace dumpkeys from the console I see:
open("/dev/tty", O_RDWR) = 3
ioctl(3, KDGKBTYPE, 0xbffff962) = 0
...
- no other open -
when remotely log and do the same:
open("/dev/tty", O_RDWR) = 3
ioctl(3, KDGKBTYPE, 0xbffff7a2) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
close(3) = 0
open("/dev/tty0", O_RDWR) = -1 EACCES (Permission denied)
...
- some more open attempts -
and then the error message a little while later. It seems the problem
is with the /dev/tty file-device. The permissions and ownership are
the same no matter how you are logged in:
ls -l /dev/tty
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 5, 0 May 5 1998 /dev/tty
so it is not just a simple matter of permissions (maybe it is, but
some other file?).
Can people confirm that dumpkeys as non-root user does not work? Anyone
have any ideas how to fix the problem?
Sincerely,
- Henrik
PS:
On a slightly different subject, I discovered a bug in of the
Mandrake scripts (/etc/profile.d/xhost.csh). Where is the place to
post such info so it gets fixed in the next distribution?
--
Henrik Schmiediche, Dept. of Statistics, Texas A&M, College Station, TX 77843
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Tel: (979) 862-1764 | Fax: (979) 845-3144
