Re: inetd and whois

[Jeff Bailey]

On Fri, Aug 02, 2002 at 05:45:00PM +0200, Marco d'Itri wrote:

> FSF received my disclaimer for the whois code, can we discuss how I can
> merge the latest release?

Absolutely!

Someone mentioned to me the other day that GNU seems to have 3 whois
clients: The old one in inetutils, yours, and jwhois.  I think it's
easy to say that the old one should be tossed.  Have you and Jonas
ever spoken about combining efforts?

> BTW, debian needs a new inetutils.

I had hoped to package this release before my vacation, but I won't be
able to do it now until I'm back.  I want to slowly get this one up to
shape to where Debian (and other distros) can consider throwing out
netkit.

> I want it to have most of the features present in the openbsd and
> freebsd ones, like per-IP rate limiting, binding to specific
> addresses and IPv6 support.  I'd like to contribute my work to
> inetutils, but I'm not sure that the current code base is the best
> one to start with.

It's absoluetly *not* the right code base, with the exception of the
libraries that some folks have already rewritten.  I'm hoping that
within the next 2 releases that we will have removed all non-FSF
copywritten code for inetutils.

I have in mind two libraries so far that need to be written and
everything adapted to:

1) Generic startup library.

This library is intended to cover all of the 'startup' cases that
something might have to deal with.  Specifically:

i) Running from inetd.

ii) Running from command line.

iii) Standalone single server

iv) Standalone forking (and pre-forking)

v) Standalone threaded

vi) MS-Windows Services.

2) Generic authentication library.

This library would handle as many authentication cases as possible:

i) /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow

ii) PAM

iii) SASL

iv) Kerberos

v) GNU/Hurd's auth server

vi) (Would SSH's priviledge separation go here?)

I can see how this model would handle IPv6 and specific address
binding.  How would you refine it to support rate limiting?

Tks,
Jeff BAiley

-- 
I reincarnated for this?