Hmmm... This is a very interesting question, and one I have not
thought much about.
Lets see if I understand this.
You want to be able to get the configuration files from appropriate
locations:
You want a USER set and a PER SERVER set.
Currently, you can use the ${HOME}/.printcap file to specify
a PER USER set of printcap entries. This is its purpose.
The PER SERVER is a bit harder. You need to be able to specify
this on a per server basis. If I added a 'lpd -f configfile'
flag, then this would allow you to specify the location of the lpd.conf
file, and you could then do things such as, at startup time,
specify the exact configuration file to use. Note that lpd.conf
allows you to specify the locations of the lpd.perms and other files.
Any comments?
Patrick
Patrick Powell Astart Technologies
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 6741 Convoy Court
Network and System San Diego, CA 92111
Consulting 858-874-6543 FAX 858-751-2435
LPRng - Print Spooler (http://www.lprng.com)
> From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tue Feb 11 06:20:43 2003
> Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 15:20:38 +0100 (MET)
> From: Ivan Popov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: a suggestion (security / configurability) for lprng
>
> Hello Patrick!
>
> I have been a printer system administrator for several years, now I have
> other things to do but I am still doing some printer-related work.
>
> I have been involved with security-related projects (like pam protocol
> design) as well.
>
> Now, to be able to administer, both user environment and hosts running
> lpd, I need to separate compilation and configuration.
>
> The config files have to reside at *different* paths for different
> hosts and users, as:
> 1. user environment is totally independent of the host she happens to run
> a program on (i.e. user-run programs cannot and do not expect
> "suitable" files in /etc !)
> 2. several independently administered printing systems share the binaries
> from a global filesystem, via the same path. It is impossible to configure
> them centrally via a global config, and impractical to force them to have
> certain files in /etc.
>
> The above does not work with compiled-in config paths.
>
> I see no apparent security problems with allowing LPD_CONF as long as the
> process is not run setuid. I know the setuid semantics varies a lot
> between systems but it shouldn't be too hard to just detect the
> setuid-ness.
>
> My 2c.
> (I am using no setuid lprng binaries and hence feel no problem with
> LPD_CONF at all).
>
> Best regards,
> --
> Ivan Popov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>
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