Bug 2154

Summary:	rdist to a RH 5.1 machine doesn't work for normal users
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	Chris Siebenmann <cks-rhbugzilla>
Component:	rdist	Assignee:	Phil Knirsch <pknirsch>
Status:	CLOSED DUPLICATE	QA Contact:
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	5.1	CC:	rvokal
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	1999-06-03 17:49:56 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Chris Siebenmann 1999-04-12 22:24:24 UTC

Because rdistd is in /usr/sbin, which is not in the normal
path, normal people attempting to rdist to a RedHat 5.1
system will fail with an error message like:
	targethost: LOCAL ERROR: Unexpected input from server: "sh:
rdistd: command not found". In order for
rdist'ing to something to work, rdistd must be on the
normal search path that 'rsh foo command' gets one.

 I see two cures:
1) relocate rdistd to something that is on the normal
   search path for rsh (eg to /usr/bin).
2) add (via PAM or just defaults) /usr/sbin to the PATH
   that rshd gives to children.

 Until either happens, rdist is sort of broken.

 Please note that not all shells support running dotfiles
on non-interactive (eg rsh'ing in) situations. I think
that rdist should a) work 'out of the box' on a RedHat
machine and b) even for people with such shells, so I
don't consider a suggestion of 'change your .cshrc or
whatever to add /usr/sbin' to be much of a solution.

(I'm aware that this is a duplicate of another person's
bug, but I want to complain about the situation not being
resolved, and one can't reopen someone else's bug report
to do that.)

Comment 1 Preston Brown 1999-04-13 16:27:59 UTC

Jeff, we really have to fix this one.

Comment 2 Jeff Johnson 1999-04-13 18:43:59 UTC

The argument that "rdist is mostly broken" doesn't hold water because
"normal people" still have to setup their .rhosts to permit access.
Setting the PATH environment variable is part of the process of
permitting remote access that needs to be performed by the user,
not Red Hat.

Adding /usr/sbin to the PATH variable in a file read during
non-interactive, non-login (i.e. rsh) access (i.e. ~/.bashrc for bash)
permits rdist to work.

For bash, add to ~/.bashrc
	PATH="$PATH:/usr/sbin"

For tcsh (and csh), add to ~/.cshrc
	setenv PATH "${PATH}:/usr/sbin"

Otherwise, create a symlink from /usr/sbin/rdistd to someplace
within the path, as in
	ln -sf /usr/sbin/rdistd /usr/bin/rdistd

I'll take a look at adding the /usr/bin/rdistd symlink in the rdist
package, but the fix probably won't be in Red Hat 6.0. Thanks for this
(and your many other) reports.

Comment 3 Jeff Johnson 1999-06-03 17:49:59 UTC

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 2075 ***