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When the new rdist is contacted by an old rdist, it is supposed to fall back to running the old rdist in server mode. Unfortunately, this doesn't work on RedHat for two reasons: - the compiled in path to the old rdist is /usr/ucb/oldrdist, which doesn't exist and - there is no package supplying the old rdist. It is possible to supply a safe (non-setuid) old rdist. See for example the version at ftp://ftp.sys.utoronto.ca/pub/rdist.tar.gz which is a quick derivative of the Net/2 version. PS: please don't 'fix' this by removing the fallback from rdist; as it is, one can at least manually supply a suitable program/symlink to make it work.
We won't add the old rdist to the Red Hat distribution (although we probably would consider the old rdist for inclusion in powertools). The path /usr/ucb/oldrdist should probably be changed to /usr/bin/oldrdist. Meanwhile, the path is there for those who need it. Please reopen this bug if you want the path changed. Send me mail if you want to try and get oldrdist included in powertools. Thanks for the report.
I'll agree with making the path /usr/bin/oldrdist, instead of /usr/ucb/oldrdist; at least that way one is making a link in an existing (and proper) directory.
Path to version 1 rdist binary changed to /usr/bin/oldrdist in rdist-6.1.5-6.