gnu inetutils

GNU networking utilities

for version 1.9.3, 31 March 2015

Alain Magloire et al.

This manual documents version 1.9.3 of the gnu networking utilities.

c 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012,
Copyright
2013, 2014, 2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the
terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version
published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no
Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included
in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.

Short Contents
1

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Common options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

dnsdomainname: Show DNS domain name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

4
5

hostname: Show or set system host name. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

logger: Send messages to system log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

ping: Packets to network hosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

ping6: Packets to IPv6 network hosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

8
9

traceroute: Trace the route to a host . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

whois: User interface to WHOIS data bases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

10 ftp: FTP client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

11 rcp: Copy files between machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
12 rexec: a remote execution program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
13 rlogin: Remote login . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
14 rsh: Remote shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
15 talk: a communication program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
16 telnet: User interface to TELNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
17 tftp: TFTP client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
18 inetd: Internet super-server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
19 syslogd: system service logging faclity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
20 ftpd: FTP daemon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
21 rexecd: server for rexec . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
22 rlogind: Remote login server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
23 rshd: Remote shell server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
24 talkd: a server for communication between users . . . . . . . . . . 66
25 telnetd: Telnet server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
26 tftpd: TFTP server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
27 uucpd: Unix to Unix Copy relay daemon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
A GNU Free Documentation License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

ii

Table of Contents
1

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Common options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.1

Exit status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

dnsdomainname: Show DNS domain name. . . . . . 3

hostname: Show or set system host name. . . . . . 4

4.1

logger: Send messages to system log . . . . . . . . . . 5

5.1
5.2

Command line options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

traceroute: Trace the route to a host . . . . . . . . 13

8.1
8.2

Command line options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Using ping for network fault isolation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Duplicate and damaged packets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Trying different data patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
TTL details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Further observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

ping6: Packets to IPv6 network hosts. . . . . . . . 11

7.1

Command line options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

ping: Packets to network hosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

6.1
6.2
6.3
6.4
6.5
6.6

Command line options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Command line options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Diagnostic tokens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

whois: User interface to WHOIS data bases.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
9.1
9.2

Command line options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Environment variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

iii

10

ftp: FTP client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

10.1
10.2
10.3
10.4
10.5
10.6
10.7

11

Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

inetd: Internet super-server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

18.1
18.2
18.3
18.4
18.5
18.6

19

Command line options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

tftp: TFTP client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

17.1

18

Invoking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

telnet: User interface to TELNET . . . . . . . . . 38

16.1

17

Command line options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Note on stream redirections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

talk: a communication program . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

15.1

16

Command line options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Escape characters and flow control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Kerberos Authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

rsh: Remote shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

14.1
14.2

15

Command line options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

rlogin: Remote login . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

13.1
13.2
13.3

14

Command line options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

rexec: a remote execution program . . . . . . . . . 31

12.1

13

17
18
26
26
26
27
27

rcp: Copy files between machines . . . . . . . . . . . 29

11.1

12

Command line options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Commands interpreted by ftp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Environment variables in use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Aborting a file transfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
File naming conventions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
File transfer parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The .netrc file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Invocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Configuration file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Built-in services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
TCPMUX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Inetd Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Error Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

42
42
44
45
45
46

syslogd: system service logging faclity . . . . . 48

19.1

Configuration file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

iv

20

ftpd: FTP daemon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

20.1
20.2
20.3
20.4

21

Invoking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Modus operandi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Access control in talkd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Crafting an execution string. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

tftpd: TFTP server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

26.1
26.2

27

Invoking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Diagnostics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

telnetd: Telnet server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

25.1

26

60
61
61
62

talkd: a server for communication between

users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

24.1
24.2
24.3

25

Invoking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Kerberos specific details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Protocol details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Diagnostics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

rshd: Remote shell server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

23.1
23.2

24

Invoking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Diagnostics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

rlogind: Remote login server. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

22.1
22.2
22.3
22.4

23

54
56
56
57

rexecd: server for rexec . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

21.1
21.2

22

Standards. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Configuration files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
File format of ftpusers and ftpchroot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Directory prefixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Use cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

uucpd: Unix to Unix Copy relay daemon. . . 74

27.1
27.2

Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Authentication steps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Appendix A GNU Free Documentation License

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Chapter 1: Introduction

1 Introduction
The GNU Network Utilities is a distribution of common networking utilities and servers,
including for example ping, traceroute and ftp.
This manual is a work in progress: many sections make no attempt to explain basic
concepts in a way suitable for novices. Thus, if you are interested, please get involved in
improving this manual. The entire gnu community will benefit.
Please report bugs to [email protected]. Remember to include the version number, machine architecture, input files, and any other information needed to reproduce the
bug: your input, what you expected, what you got, and why it is wrong. Diffs are welcome,
but please include a description of the problem as well, since this is sometimes difficult to
infer.
The individual utilities were originally derived from the 4.4BSDLite2 distribution, although some of them have more or less been rewritten. What you are reading now is
the authoritative and complete documentation for these utilities; the man pages are now
automatically generated.
Many features were integrated from NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and GNU/Linux, the
merges were done by a group of dedicated hackers (in no particular order): Jeff Bailey, Marcus Brinkmann, Michael Vogt, Bernhard Rosenkraenzer, Kaveh R. Ghazi, NIIBE Yutaka,
Nathan Neulinger, Jeff Smith, Dan Stromberg, David OShea, Frederic Goudal, Gerald
Combs, Joachim Gabler, Marco DItri, Sergey Poznyakoff, and many more.

Chapter 2: Common options

2 Common options
Certain options are available in all these programs. Rather than writing identical descriptions for each of the programs, they are described here. (In fact, every gnu program accepts,
or should accept, these options.)
Many of these programs take arbitrary strings as arguments. In those cases, --help and
--version are taken as these options only if there is one and exactly one command line
argument.
--help

Print a usage message, listing all available options, then exit successfully.

--usage

Print a condensed usage message, displaying all available options formatted like
a command line call, then exit successfully.

--version
Print the version number, then exit successfully.
--

Delimit the option list. Later arguments, if any, are treated as operands even
if they begin with -.

2.1 Exit status

Nearly every command invocation yields an integral exit status that can be used to change
how other commands work. For the vast majority of commands, an exit status of zero
indicates success. Failure is indicated by a nonzero value typically 1, though it may
differ on unusual platforms, as POSIX requires only that it be nonzero.

Chapter 3: dnsdomainname: Show DNS domain name

3 dnsdomainname: Show DNS domain name

dnsdomainname is a program to show the domain part of the systems fully qualified domain
name. For example, if the FQDN of the system is name.example.org the command will
show example.org. The output is not necessarily related to the NIS/YP domain name.
The tool uses gethostname to get the host name of the system and then getaddrinfo to
resolve it into a canonical name. The domain part of the canonical name is shown, i.e., the
part after the first period (.) of the official name.
Synopsis:
dnsdomainname [option...]
There is no command specific option.

Chapter 4: hostname: Show or set system host name.

4 hostname: Show or set system host name.

hostname is a program to show or to set the name of a host system.
Synopsis:
hostname [option...]
hostname name
where name is the name to be used by the running host.

4.1 Command line options

-a
--aliases
Get alias names.
-d
--domain

Get DNS domain name.

-f
--fqdn
--long

Get DNS host name or Fully Qualified Domain Name.

-F file
--file=file
Set host name or NIS domain name from FILE.
-i
--ip-addresses
Get addresses for the host name.
-s
--short

Get short host name.

-y
--yp
--nis

Get NIS/YP domain name.

Chapter 5: logger: Send messages to system log

5 logger: Send messages to system log

logger is a program to send entries to system log. It provides a shell command interface
similar to the system log module. For background information, see Section Syslog in The
GNU C Library Reference Manual.
Synopsis:
logger [option...] [message]

5.1 Command line options

-4
--ipv4
-6
--ipv6

Use IPv4 as transport when logging to a host. The default behaviour is to use
whatever IP version that matches the host.
Use IPv6 as transport when logging to a host. The option is present also on
systems without support for IPv6, but will then issue a warning and then fall
back to IPv4 when delivering the message.
Both options are most influencial when the target host is named using a symbolic name, but numerical addresses for host or source must also match if either
of --ipv4 or --ipv6 is stated.

-f file
--file=file
Log the content of the specified file. If file is - then standard input is assumed.
-h host
--host=host
Send messages to the given host or socket. The host argument can be either a
local UNIX socket name (containing a slash /), or be of the form
host[:port]
where host is the remote host name or IP address, and the optional port is a
decimal port number or symbolic service name from /etc/services. If port is
not specified, the port number corresponding to the syslog service is used. If
a numerical IPv6 address is given without a port specification, then the address
must be enclosed within brackets (like [::1]).
-i[pid]
--id=[pid]
Add process ID to each message. If pid is not supplied, use the process ID of the
logger process with each line. Notice, that pid is an optional argument. When
supplied to the -i option, it must follow the i letter immediately, without any
separating whitespace. When supplied to the --id form, it must be separated
from it by exactly one equals sign.
-p priority
--priority=priority
Enter the message with the specified priority. The priority may be specified
numerically or as a facility.level pair. For example, -p local3.info logs

Chapter 5: logger: Send messages to system log

the message at the informational level in the local3 facility. The default is
user.notice.
The actual list of supported facilities and levels is system specific.
-s
--stderr

Log the message to standard error, as well as to the system log.

-S addr
--source=addr
Supply the source IP address for INET connections. This option is useful in
conjunction with --host (see above). The kind of address specified here (IPv4
or IPv6) will propagate to influence the resolution of the host address, if it is a
symbolic name.
-t tag
--tag=tag
Mark every line in the log with the specified tag.
-u socket
--unix=socket
Send messages to the given local UNIX socket. The socket argument can be
either an absolute path (starting with a slash /), or a relative path understood
relative to the current working directory.
The options are followed by the message which should be written to the log. If not
specified, and the -f flag is not provided, standard input is logged.

5.2 Examples
The following examples illustrate the usage of the logger command:
1. Log the message System rebooted to the local syslog. Use default facility and priority:
logger System rebooted
2. Run command and send its error output to the channel local0.err. Mark each
message with tag cmd:
command 2>&1 | logger -p local0.err -t cmd
3. Log each line from file warnings to channel daemon.warn on host
logger.runasimi.org, using the source IP 10.10.10.1:
logger -p daemon.warn -h logger.runasimi.org -S 10.10.10.1 \
--file warnings

Chapter 6: ping: Packets to network hosts

6 ping: Packets to network hosts

ping uses ICMP datagrams to provoke a response from the chosen destination host, mainly
intending to probe whether it is alive.
The used datagram, of type ECHO_REQUEST, contains some header information and some
additional payload, usually a time stamp. By a suitable choice of payload, different host or
router properties are detectable, as the emitted datagram travels to its destination.
Synopsis:
ping [option...] host
Sending echo requests is the standard use of ping, but by far not the only use case.

6.1 Command line options

Selection of packet type is handled by these first options:
--address
Send ICMP ADDRESS packets, thus requesting the address netmask in use by
the targetted host.
--echo

Send ICMP ECHO requests. This is the default action.

--mask

Identical to --address.

--timestamp
Send ICMP TIMESTAMP packets, thereby requesting a timed response from
the targetted host.
In successful cases three time values are returned. All are expected to state the
number of milliseconds since midnight UTC. The first of these, icmp_otime,
contains the original time of sending the request. Then comes icmp_rtime,
the time of reception by the target, and finally, icmp_ttime, the time of
transmitting an answer back to the originator.
-t type
--type=type
Send type packets.
timestamp.

Accepted values are address, echo, mask, and

The following options are available for all packet types:

-c n
--count=n
Stop after sending and receiving answers to a total of n packets.
-d
--debug

Set the SO DEBUG option on the socket being used.

-i n
--interval=n
Wait n seconds until sending next packet. The default is to wait for one second
between packets. This option is incompatible with the option -f.

Chapter 6: ping: Packets to network hosts

-n
--numeric
Numeric output only. No attempt will be made to resolve symbolic names for
host addresses.
-r
--ignore-routing
Bypass the normal routing tables and send directly to a host on an attached
network. If the host is not on a directly attached network, an error is returned.
This option can be used to ping a local host through an interface that has no
route through it (e.g., after the interface was dropped by routed).
-T num
--tos=num
Set type-of-service, TOS field, to num on transmitted packets.
--ttl=n

Set the specified number n as value of time-to-live when transmitting packets.

Acceptable values are 1 to 255, inclusive.

-v
--verbose
Produce more verbose output, giving more statistics.
-w n
--timeout=n
Stop after n seconds.
-W n
--linger=n
Maximum number of seconds n to wait for a response.
Finally, these last options are relevant only for sending echo requests, allowing many
variations in order to detect various peculiarities of the targeted host, or the intermediary
routers for that matter.
-f
--flood

Flood ping. Outputs packets as fast as they come back or one hundred times per
second, whichever is more. For every ECHO REQUEST packet sent, a period
. is printed, while for every ECHO REPLY received in reply, a backspace is
printed. This provides a rapid display of how many packets are being dropped.
Only the super-user may use this option. This can be very hard on a network
and should be used with caution.

--ip-timestamp=flag
Include IP option Timestamp in transmitted packets. The value flag is either
tsonly, which only records up to nine time stamps, or tsaddr, which records
IP addresses as well as time stamps, but for at most four hosts.
-l n
--preload=n
If n is specified, ping sends that many packets as fast as possible before falling
into its normal mode of operation.

Chapter 6: ping: Packets to network hosts

-p pat
--pattern=pat
You may specify up to 16 pad bytes to fill out the packet you send. This is
useful for diagnosing data-dependent problems in a network. For example, -p
ff will cause the sent packet to be filled with all ones.
-q
--quiet
-R
--route

-s n
--size=n

Do not print timing for each transmitted packet.

Record route. Includes the RECORD_ROUTE field in the ECHO REQUEST packet
and displays the route buffer on returned packets. Note that the IP header is
only large enough for nine such routes. Many hosts ignore or discard this option.
Specifies the number of data bytes to be sent. The default is 56, which translates
into 64 ICMP data bytes, taking the 8 bytes of ICMP header data into account.

6.2 Using ping for network fault isolation

When using ping for fault isolation, it should first be run on the local host, to verify
that the local network interface is up and running. Then, hosts and gateways further and
further away should be pinged. Round-trip times and packet loss statistics are computed. If
duplicate packets are received, they are not included in the packet loss calculation, although
the round trip time of these packets is used in calculating the minimum/average/maximum
round-trip time numbers. When the specified number of packets have been sent (and
received) or if the program is terminated with a SIGINT, a brief summary is displayed.
This program is intended for use in network testing, measurement and management.
Because of the load it can impose on the network, it is unwise to use ping during normal
operations or from automated scripts.

6.3 Duplicate and damaged packets

Ping will report duplicate and damaged packets. Duplicate packets should never occur,
and seem to be caused by inappropriate link-level retransmissions. Duplicates may occur
in many situations and are rarely (if ever) a good sign, although the presence of low levels
of duplicates may not always be cause for alarm.
Damaged packets are obviously serious cause for alarm and often indicate broken hardware somewhere in the ping packets path (in the network or in the hosts).

6.4 Trying different data patterns

The (inter)network layer should never treat packets differently depending on the data contained in the data portion. Unfortunately, data-dependent problems have been known to
sneak into networks and remain undetected for long periods of time. In many cases the
particular pattern that will have problems is something that doesnt have sufficient transitions, such as all ones or all zeros, or a pattern right at the edge, such as almost all
zeros. It isnt necessarily enough to specify a data pattern of all zeros (for example) on
the command line because the pattern that is of interest is at the data link level, and the
relationship between what you type and what the controllers transmit can be complicated.

Chapter 6: ping: Packets to network hosts

10

This means that if you have a data-dependent problem you will probably have to do a
lot of testing to find it. If you are lucky, you may manage to find a file that either cant
be sent across your network or that takes much longer to transfer than other similar length
files. You can then examine this file for repeated patterns that you can test using the -p
option of ping.

6.5 TTL details

The TTL field, Time To Live, of an IP packet represents the maximum number of IP routers
that the packet can go through before being discarded. In current practice you can expect
each router on the Internet to decrement the TTL field by exactly one.
The TCP/IP specification states that the TTL field of a new TCP packet should be set
to 60, but many systems use smaller values (4.3BSD used 30 and 4.2BSD used 15).
The maximum possible value of this field is 255, and most UNIX systems set the TTL
field of ICMP (type ECHO_REQUEST) packets to 255. This is why you will find you can ping
some hosts, but not reach them with telnet or ftp.
During normal operation, ping prints the TTL value for every packet it receives. When
a remote system receives an ICMP packet, it can do one of three things to the TTL field in
its response packet:
Not to change it. This is what Berkeley UNIX systems did before the 4.3BSD-Tahoe
release. In this case the TTL value in the received packet will be 255 minus the number
of routers in the round-trip path.
Set it to 255. This is what current Berkeley UNIX systems do. In this case the TTL
value in the received packet will be 255 minus the number of routers in the path from
the remote system to the pinging host.
Set it to some other value. Some machines use the same value for ICMP packets that
they use for TCP packets, for example either 30 or 60. Others may use completely
arbitrary values.

6.6 Further observations

Many hosts and gateways ignore the RECORD_ROUTE field, since the maximum IP header
length is far to small to hold all the routes. There is not much that can be done about this.
Flood pinging is not recommended in general, and flood pinging the broadcast address
should only be done under very controlled conditions.
Some BSD variants offer a kernel setting to inhibit all replies to ICMP MASKREQ
packets, but in general, Unices are designed either to answer the request with a valid
netmask, or to drop the request, causing ping to wait for a timeout condition.

Chapter 7: ping6: Packets to IPv6 network hosts

11

7 ping6: Packets to IPv6 network hosts

ping6 uses ICMPv6 datagrams to get a response from the chosen destination host. The
most common use is to probe whether the remote system is responsive. Observe that this
program only uses IPv6 datagrams.
Each datagram, of type ECHO_REQUEST, carries some header information and some additional payload, usually a time stamp. Making a suitable choice of payload, it is possible to
probe different host or router properties on the way as the emitted datagram travels to its
destination.
Synopsis:
ping6 [option...] host
Sending simple, timed echo requests is the standard use of ping6, but is by far not the only
use case.
This command is a close parallel to ping, except that it handles IPv6 and is thus not
able to handle peculiarities of IPv4.

7.1 Command line options

-c n
--count=n
Stop after sending and receiving answers to a total of n packets.
-d
--debug
-f
--flood

Set the SO DEBUG option on the socket being used.

Flood ping. Outputs packets as fast as they come back, or one hundred times
per second, whichever is more. For every ECHO REQUEST packet sent, a period . is printed, while for every ECHO REPLY received in reply, a backspace
is printed.
This provides a rapid display of how many packets are being dropped. Only
the super-user may use this option. This mode can be very hard on a network.
It should be used with caution!

--hoplimit=n
Limit maximal distance to n. Acceptable values are 1 to 255, inclusive.
-i n
--interval=n
Wait n seconds until sending next packet. The default is to wait for one second
between packets. This option is incompatible with the option -f.
-l n
--preload=n
Sends n packets as fast as possible before falling back to the normal mode of
operation.

Chapter 7: ping6: Packets to IPv6 network hosts

12

-n
--numeric
Numeric output only. No attempt will be made to resolve symbolic names for
host addresses.
-p pattern
--pattern=pattern
Up to 16 hexadecimal pad bytes are given as pattern. These are use for filling
out the packets you send. This option is useful for diagnosing data-dependent
problems within a network. As an example, -p ff will cause the sent packets
to have payloads with every bit set to one.
-q
--quiet

Do not print timing result of each transmitted packet.

-r
--ignore-routing
Bypass the normal routing tables and send directly to a host on an attached
network. If the host is not on a directly attached network, an error is returned.
This option can be used to ping a local host through an interface, for which
there is no assigned route, such as when the interface was dropped by routed.
-s n
--size=n

Specifies the number of data bytes to be sent. The default is 56, which translates
into 64 ICMP data bytes, taking the 8 bytes of ICMP header data into account.

-T num
--tos=num
Set the traffic class to num on transmitted packets.
--ttl=n

Synonym for --hoplimit.

-v
--verbose
Produce more verbose output, giving more statistics.
-w n
--timeout=n
Stop after n seconds.
The documentation of ping provides several pieces of information, and discussions, relevant to the use of ping6. Keep in mind, though, that the differing address family causes
some discrepancy. See Chapter 6 [ping invocation], page 7.

Chapter 8: traceroute: Trace the route to a host

13

8 traceroute: Trace the route to a host

traceroute prints a trace of the route IP packets are travelling to a remote host.
Synopsis:
traceroute [option...] host

8.1 Command line options

-f num
--first-hop=num
Set the initial hop distance to num, instead of the default 1. This immediately
allows probing packets to sense routing properties closer to the target host,
skipping routers close to the local host. Quicker analysis of problems known to
lie at some routing distance is the outcome.
-g gates
--gateways=gates
Set intermediary hosts used in loose source routing. The argument gates is a
list of gateways, using spaces, commata, or semicola as separators. These hosts
must be traversed in the given order before the intended host receives any
datagram. At most eight host names or addresses may be specified. Multiple
uses of -g produce a concatenated list.
-I
--icmp

Use ICMP ECHO datagrams for probing the remote host.

-m num
--max-hop=num
Set the maximum time-to-live allowed for probing. In other words, stop probing
when the hop distance is in excess of num. The default limit is 64.
-M method
--type=method
Use method as carrier packets for traceroute operations. Supported choices are
icmp and udp, where udp is the default type.
-p port
--port=port
Set destination port of target to port. The default value is 33434.
-q num
--tries=num
Send a total of num probe packets per hop, defaulting to 3.
--resolve-hostnames
Attempt to resolve all addresses as hostnames.
-t num
--tos=num
Set type-of-service, TOS field, to num on transmitted packets.

Chapter 8: traceroute: Trace the route to a host

14

-w num
--wait=num
Set timeout in seconds, within which a returning response packet is accepted
as such. Default waiting time is three seconds.

8.2 Diagnostic tokens

During execution, traceroute sends three datagrams for each value for the TTL field,
printing a diagnostic line of output for these. The TTL field is then steadily increased until
the intended host responds, or some intermediary gateway returns a datagram to the effect
that the target cannot be reached due to one reason or another.
Each line of output displays a sequence number, followed by diagnostic annotation.
Any responding host has its address printed without repetition, together with a measured
timing. In case there is no response within a time period of three seconds, an asterisque *
is printed.
When an intermediate router responds with an exceptional state, the time elapsed since
emitting the original datagram is printed, followed by an additional short hand hint of the
reason:
!F

Fragmentation needed by gateway.

!H

Host not reachable from gateway.

!N

Network not reachable from gateway.

!P

Protocol not usable at host, or within network.

!S

Source routing failed at gateway.

!T

Host or network not reachable for stated type of service, TOS.

!U

Isolated host, not reachable.

!X

Forbidden by remote administration.

Chapter 9: whois: User interface to WHOIS data bases.

15

9 whois: User interface to WHOIS data bases.

The functionality of a world wide Internet is dependent on stored node information of different kinds. Registrars keep much relevant material in WHOIS data bases. This utility whois
is able to query those sources for general and for particular properties of most domains.
For many domains there are names of suitable data base servers hard coded into whois,
ready to query for domain relevant information. Since servers names do change from time
to time, this utility might occasionally need some guidance using a suitable command line
option.
Synopsis:
whois [OPTION...] OBJECT...

9.1 Command line options

-a

Search all data bases.

-F

Fast and raw output. Implies -r.

-g source:first-last
Find updates for an object from provider source, starting from the version with
serial key first, and ending with serial key last.
-h host
--server=host
Connect to server host.
-H

Hide legal disclaimers.

-i attr[,attr2...]
Do an inverse lookup for specified attributes. Use a comma separated list for
multiple attributes.
-l

One level less specific lookup. Applies to RPSL only.

-L

Find all less specific matches.

-m

Find more specific matches, one level deeper.

-M

Find all more specific matches.

-p port

Connect to server port port.

-q {version|sources}
Query specified server info. Applies to RPSL only.
-r

Turn off recursive lookups.

-R

Force output to show local copy of the domain object, even if it contains a
referral.

-s source[,source2...]
Search the data base at source.
providers.
-S

A comma separated list queries multiple

Tell server to refrain from syntactic sugar.

Chapter 9: whois: User interface to WHOIS data bases.

-t type

16

Request a template for objects of type type. Use the value all for a list of
possible types.

-T type[,type2...]
Search only for objects of type type. A comma separated list allows for multiple
types.
-V
--verbose
Verbosely explain all actions taken.
-x

Search only for exact matches. Applicable only to RPSL.

9.2 Environment variables

whois holds an internal list of information servers and their assigned data bases. Queries
are examined against this list to select the most plausible server, but the hint can always
be overruled on the command line by use of the option -h. If neither of these have a say,
then the default server to ask is whois.internic.net, but this name is in turn overruled
by a server name in the environment variable WHOIS_SERVER.
LANG

When the server whois.nic.ad.jp is queried, and only then, any

non-Japanese locale in LANG will ask the server to reply with English text, not
Japanese.

WHOIS_HIDE
When set, the effect on whois is as if the option -H had been given.
WHOIS_SERVER
Data base server to query when internal hinting is inconclusive. When unset,
whois.internic.net is used as default server.

Chapter 10: ftp: FTP client

17

10 ftp: FTP client

ftp is the user interface to FTP, the File Transfer Protocol. The program allows a user to
transfer files to and from a remote network site.
Synopsis:
ftp [option...] [host [port]]
pftp [option...] [host [port]]
The alternate name pftp is starting in passive mode, but is otherwise identical to ftp.
The client host with which ftp is to communicate may be specified on the command line.
If this is done, ftp will immediately attempt to establish a connection to the FTP server
running on that host. Otherwise, the program will start a command interpreter and will
await further instructions from the user. Commands can either be entered interactively, or
piped as a batched job read from standard input. ftp is able to distinguish between these
two modes of operation.

10.1 Command line options

Many command line options have counterparts among the commands handled by the internal interpreter.
-4
--ipv4

Initially set addressing to IPv4 only.

-6
--ipv6

Initially set addressing to IPv6 only.

-A
--active

Enable active mode transfer. Default mode for ftp.

-d
--debug

Enable debugging output and possibly also socket debugging.

-e
--no-edit
Disables the editing of commands. This is default setting for batch mode,
without a TTY.
-g
--no-glob
Disables file name globbing.
-i
--no-prompt
Turns off interactive prompting during multiple file transfers.
-N netrc
--netrc=netrc
Set a preferred location of the .netrc file, thus overriding any environment
setting in NETRC, as well as the default location $HOME/.netrc, see Section 10.7
[The .netrc file], page 27.

Chapter 10: ftp: FTP client

18

-n
--no-login
Restrains ftp from attempting auto-login upon initial connection. If auto-login
is enabled, ftp will check the .netrc (see Section 10.7 [The .netrc file], page 27)
file in the users home directory for an entry describing an account on the remote
machine. If no entry exists, ftp will prompt for the remote machine login name
(default is the user identity on the local machine), and, if necessary, prompt for
a password and an account with which to login.
-p
--passive
Enable passive mode transfer. Default mode when invoked as pftp.
--prompt[=prompt]
Print a command-line prompt, even if not on a tty. If prompt is supplied,
its value is used instead of the default ftp> . Notice, that the argument is
optional.
-t
--trace

Enable packet tracing (not implemented).

-v
--verbose
Start in verbose mode, printing informational messages. This is default for
interactive mode.

10.2 Commands interpreted by ftp

When ftp is awaiting commands from the user, a prompt is displayed. The default string is
ftp>, but it can been changed with a command line option, perhaps to enhance uniqueness
while recording a session.
Be aware that correct execution of many commands depends upon a proper behavior of
the remote server. The following commands are recognized by ftp itself. Command names
can be abbreviated to the shortest unique string with identical beginning.
! [command [args]]
Invoke an interactive shell on the local machine. If there are arguments, the first
is taken to be a command to execute directly, with the rest of the arguments
as its arguments.
$ macro-name [args]
Execute the macro macro-name that was defined with the macdef command.
Arguments are passed to the macro unglobbed.
account [passwd]
Supply a supplemental password required by a remote system for access to
resources, once a login has been successfully completed. If no argument is
included, the user will be prompted for an account password in non-echoing
input mode.

Chapter 10: ftp: FTP client

19

append local-file [remote-file]

Append a local file to a file on the remote machine. If remote-file is left unspecified, the local file name is used in naming the remote file after being altered
by any ntrans or nmap setting. File transfer uses the current settings for type,
format, mode, and structure.
ascii

Set the file transfer type to network ASCII. This is the default type, except
when two unices are communicating.

bell

Arrange that a bell be sounded after each file transfer command is completed.

binary

Set the file transfer type to support binary image transfer. This transfer type is
selected during initial handshake, should the client on a Unix system recognize
that the server is also running on a Unix system.

bye
quit
case

Terminate the FTP session with the remote server and exit ftp. An end of file
will also terminate the session and exit.
Toggle the remote computers use of letter case mapping during mget commands. When case is on, a file name at the remote site whose every letter
appear in upper case, will be renamed in such a way that all letters are changed
to lower case for a local copy of the same file. The default setting is off,

cd remote-directory
Change the working directory on the remote machine to remote-directory.
cdup

Change the remote machines working directory to the parent of the current
working directory.

chmod mode file-name

Change the access permission of the file file-name on the remote system to
mode.
close
disconnect
Terminate the FTP session with the present remote server, and return to the
command interpreter. Any defined macros are erased.
cr

Toggle carriage return stripping during ASCII type file retrieval. Records are
denoted by a carriage return/linefeed sequence during ASCII type file transfer.
When cr is on (the default), carriage returns are stripped from this sequence to
conform with the UNIX single linefeed record delimiter. Records on non-UNIX
remote systems may contain single linefeeds; when an ASCII type transfer is
made, these linefeeds may be distinguished from a record delimiter only when
cr is off.

delete remote-file
Delete the file remote-file on the remote machine.
debug [debug-value]
Toggle debugging mode. If an optional debug-value is specified it is used to set
the debugging level. When debugging is on, ftp prints each command sent to
the remote machine, preceded by the string -->.

Chapter 10: ftp: FTP client

20

dir [remote-directory] [local-file]

Print a listing of the contents in the directory remote-directory, and, optionally,
place the output in local-file. If interactive prompting is set, ftp will prompt the
user to verify that the last argument is the intended local file to receive output.
If no directory is specified, the current working directory on the remote machine
is used. If no local file is specified, or if local-file is a dash -, then output is
displayed on the terminal.
epsv4

Toggle the use of EPSV/EPRT for IPv4 addressing. Default is off.

form format
Set the file transfer form to format. The only supported format is non-print.
get remote-file [local-file]
recv remote-file [local-file]
Retrieve the remote-file and store it on the local machine. If a local file name is
not specified, the local copy is given the same name as is stated for the remote
original, subject to alteration by the current case, ntrans, and nmap settings.
The current settings for type, form, mode, and structure are effective during
file transfer.
glob

Toggle file name expansion for mdelete, mget, and mput. If globbing is turned
off with glob, the file name arguments are taken literally and are not expanded.
Globbing for mput is done as in csh syntax. For mdelete and mget, each
remote file name is expanded separately on the remote machine and the lists
are not merged. Expansion of a directory name is likely to be different from
expansion of the name of an ordinary file: the exact result depends on the
remote operating system and on the FTP server, and can be previewed by
issuing mls remote-files -.
Note: mget and mput are not meant to transfer entire directory subtrees of files.
That can be achieved by transferring an already created tar or cpio archive of
the subtree, then making certain that ftp uses binary mode.

hash [size]
In the absence of an argument, toggle the state of hash-sign (#) printing after
each transferred data block. The optional argument selects the size of data
blocks, and unconditionally activates printing. The default size is 1024 bytes.
For convenience, the size can be written with postfix multipliers k, K, m,
M, and g, G, to specify kilobytes, Megabytes, and Gigabytes, respectively.
help [command]
? [command]
Print an informative message about the meaning of command. If no argument
is given, ftp prints a list of the known commands.
idle [seconds]
Set the inactivity timer on the remote server to seconds seconds. If seconds is
omitted, the current inactivity timer is printed.
ipv4

Select IPv4 as the only addressing scheme.

ipv6

Select IPv6 as the only addressing scheme.

Chapter 10: ftp: FTP client

ipany

21

Allow IPv4 as well as IPv6 addressing.

lcd [directory]
Change the working directory on the local machine. If no directory is specified,
the users home directory is used.
lpwd

Print the name of the current working directory on the local machine.

ls [remote-directory] [local-file]
Print a listing of the contents of a directory on the remote machine. The listing
includes any system-dependent information that the server chooses to include;
for example, most UNIX systems will produce output like the command ls -l
does. Use nlist for a simple file listing.
If remote-directory is left unspecified, the current working directory is used.
With interactive prompting set, ftp will prompt the user to verify that the last
argument is indeed the intended local file for storing output. Should no local
file be specified, or if local-file is a dash -, then output is sent to the terminal.
macdef macro-name
Define a macro called macro-name, with subsequent lines as the macro definition. A null line (consecutive newline characters in a file, or carriage returns
at a terminal) terminates macro input mode. There is a limit of 16 macros
and a total of 4096 characters shared by all defined macros. Only the first
eight characters in macro-name are significant when determining which macro
to execute. Macros remain defined until a close command is executed.
The macro processor interprets $ and \ as special characters. A $ followed
by a number (one or more digits) is replaced by the corresponding argument
on the macros invocation command line. A $ followed by the letter i tells
the macro processor that the macro is to perform a loop. On the first pass,
$i is replaced by the first argument on the macros invocation command line,
while on the second pass it is replaced by the second argument, and so forth.
Iteration proceeds until all arguments have been consumed.
A backslash \ followed by any character is replaced by that character. Use
the backslash \ to prevent special treatment of the dollar sign $, as was just
explained.
mdelete [remote-files]
Delete all remote-files on the remote machine.
mdir remote-files local-file
Like dir, except multiple remote files may be specified. If interactive prompting
is on, ftp will prompt the user to verify that the last argument is indeed the
intended local file for storing any output from mdir.
mget remote-files
Expand the remote-files on the remote machine and execute a get for each file
name thus produced. Resulting file names will then be processed according to
case, ntrans, and nmap settings. Files are transferred to the local working
directory, which can be changed with lcd directory; new local directories can
be created with ! mkdir directory.

Chapter 10: ftp: FTP client

22

mkdir directory-name
Make a directory on the remote machine.
mls remote-files local-file
Like nlist, except multiple remote files may be specified, and the local-file
must be specified. If interactive prompting is on, ftp will prompt the user to
verify that the last argument is the intended local file for storing output. A
dash - is accepted as last argument without check!
mode [mode-name]
Set the file transfer mode to mode-name. The default mode is stream, and it
is also the only implemented mode.
modtime file-name
Show the last modification time of the file on the remote machine.
mput local-files
Consider the arguments to be local names and expand any wild card. Execute a
put for each file in the resulting list. The remote file names are then computed
by use of ntrans and nmap settings.
newer file-name
Get the file only if the modification time of the remote file is more recent than
the file on the current system. If the file does not exist on the current system,
the remote file is considered newer. In other respects, this command is identical
to get.
nlist [remote-directory] [local-file]
Print a list of the files in a directory on the remote machine. If remote-directory
is left unspecified, the current working directory is used. If interactive prompting is on, ftp will prompt the user to verify that the last argument is the
intended local file for storing output. If no local file is specified, or if local-file
is -, the output is sent to the terminal.
nmap [inpattern outpattern]
Set or unset the file name mapping mechanism. If no arguments are specified,
the file name mapping mechanism is unset. Name mapping is applied during
mput and put commands issued without a specified remote target filename. It as
also applied to local file names during mget and get commands issued without
local target file name. This command is useful when connecting to a non-UNIX
remote computer with different file naming conventions or practices.
The mapping follows the pattern set by inpattern and outpattern. The template inpattern is used on incoming filenames (which may have already been
processed according to the ntrans and case settings). Variable templating is
accomplished by including the sequences $1, $2, . . . , $9 in inpattern. Use
\ to prevent this special treatment of the character $. All other characters
are treated literally, and must be matched in a file name for inpattern to bind
substrings to variables.
For example, take a pattern $1.$2 and a file name mydata.data. Then $1
would have the value mydata, and $2 would be data.

Chapter 10: ftp: FTP client

23

outpattern determines the final file name. The sequences $1 to $9 are

replaced by any values bound to them by inpattern. A special sequence $0
always contains the original filename. In addition, a bracketted sequence
[seq1,seq2] expands to seq1 if seq1 contains a non-empty string, and
expands to seq2 otherwise. For example, the command
nmap $1.$2.$3 [$1,$2].[$2,file]
would yield the output file name myfile.data for input names myfile.data
and myfile.data.old, but produces myfile.file from the input myfile, and
myfile.myfile from .myfile.
Spaces may be included in outpattern, but are easily removed:
nmap $1 |sed "s/ *$//" > $1
Use a backslash \ to escape the characters $, [, ], and ,.
ntrans [inchars [outchars]]
Set or unset the filename character translation mechanism. If no arguments are
specified, the filename character translation mechanism is unset. If arguments
are specified, characters in remote filenames are translated during mput commands and put commands issued without a specified remote target filename. If
arguments are specified, characters in local filenames are translated during mget
commands and get commands issued without a specified local target filename.
This command is useful when connecting to a non-UNIX remote computer with
different file naming conventions or practices.
Characters in a filename matching a character in inchars are replaced with the
corresponding character in outchars. If the characters position in inchars is
longer than the length of outchars, the character is deleted from the file name.
open host [port]
Establish a connection to the specified FTP server at host. An optional port
number may be supplied, in which case, ftp will attempt to contact the server
at that specific TCP port. If the autologin option is on (is so by default), ftp
will also attempt to automatically log the user in to the FTP server.
passive

Toggle passive mode. If passive mode is turned on (default is off), the ftp
client will send a PASV command for all data connections instead of the usual
PORT command. The PASV command requests that the remote server open a
port for the data connection and return the address of that port. The remote
server listens on that port and the client connects to it. When using the more
traditional PORT command, the client listens on a port and sends that address to
the remote server, who connects back to it. Passive mode is useful when using
ftp through a gateway router or host that controls the directionality of traffic.
(Note that though ftp servers are required to support the PASV command by
RFC 1123, some do not.) If epsv4 has been set to on, the client will attempt
EPSV before PASV for IPv4. As a last resort LPSV is attempted. With IPv6 only
EPSV and LPSV are possible.

prompt

Toggle interactive prompting. Interactive prompting occurs during multiple

file transfers to allow the user to selectively retrieve or store files. If prompting

Chapter 10: ftp: FTP client

24

is turned off (default is on), any mget or mput will transfer all files, and any
mdelete will delete all files.
proxy ftp-command
Execute an ftp command on a secondary control connection. This command
allows simultaneous connection to two remote FTP servers for transferring files
between the two servers. The first proxy command should be open, to establish the secondary control connection. Enter the command proxy ? to see
other commands usable for the secondary connection. The following commands
behave differently when prefaced by proxy: open will not define new macros
during the auto-login process, close will not erase existing macro definitions,
get and mget transfer files from the host on the primary control connection
to the host on the secondary control connection, and put, mput, and append
transfer files from the host on the secondary control connection to the host on
the primary control connection.
Note that the protocol command PASV must be understood by the server on
the secondary control connection for this kind of file transfer to succeed.
put local-file [remote-file]
send local-file [remote-file]
Store a local file on the remote machine. If remote-file is left unspecified,
the local file name is used after processing according to any ntrans or nmap
settings in naming the remote file. File transfer uses the current settings for
type, format, mode, and structure.
pwd

Print the name of the current working directory on the remote machine.

quote arg...
The arguments specified are sent, verbatim, to the remote FTP server.
reget remote-file [local-file]
reget acts like get, except that if local-file exists and is smaller than remotefile, then local-file is presumed to be a partially transferred copy of remote-file
and the transfer is continued from the apparent point of failure. This command
is useful when transferring very large files over networks that are prone to
dropping connections.
rhelp [command-name]
Request help from the remote FTP server. If command-name is specified it is
passed to the server as well.
rstatus [file-name]
With no arguments, show status of remote machine. If filename is specified,
show status of file-name on remote machine.
rename [from] [to]
Rename the file from on the remote machine as to. Name mapping takes effect
without to.
reset

Clear reply queue. This command re-synchronizes command/reply sequencing

with the remote FTP server. Resynchronization may be necessary following a
violation of the FTP protocol by the remote server.

Chapter 10: ftp: FTP client

25

restart marker
Restart the immediately following get or put at the indicated marker. On
UNIX systems, marker is usually a byte offset into the file.
rmdir directory-name
Delete a directory on the remote machine.
runique

Toggle the storing of files on the local system with unique filenames. If a file
already exists with a name equal to the inteded local file name for a get or
mget command, then a string .1 is appended to the name. If the resulting
name matches another existing file, .2 is appended to the original name. If
this process continues up to .99, an error message is printed, and the transfer
does not take place. The generated unique filename will be reported. Note that
runique will not affect local files generated from a shell command. The default
value is off.

sendport

Toggle the use of PORT commands. By default, ftp will attempt to use a PORT
command when establishing a connection for each data transfer. The use of
PORT commands can prevent delays when performing multiple file transfers. If
the PORT command fails, ftp will use the default data port. When the use of
PORT commands is disabled, no attempt will be made to use PORT commands
for each data transfer. This is useful for certain FTP implementations which
do ignore PORT commands but, incorrectly, indicate theyve been accepted.

site arg...
The arguments specified are sent, verbatim, to the remote FTP server as a SITE
command.
size file-name
Return size of file-name on remote machine.
status

Show the current status of ftp.

struct [struct-name]
Set the file transfer structure to struct-name. By default file structure is
used, which also is the only supported value.
sunique

Toggle storing of files on remote machine under unique file names. Remote FTP
server must support FTP protocol STOU command for successful completion.
The remote server will report unique name. Default value is off.

system

Show the type of operating system running on the remote machine.

tenex

Set the file transfer type to that needed to talk to TENEX machines.

trace

Toggle packet tracing (feature is not implemented).

type [type-name]
Set the file transfer type to type-name. If no type is specified, the current type
is printed. The recognized type names are ascii, binary, ebcdic, image,
and tenex. The default type is network ASCII.
umask [newmask]
Set the default umask on the remote server to newmask. If newmask is omitted,
the current umask is printed.

Chapter 10: ftp: FTP client

26

user user-name [password] [account]

Identify yourself to the remote FTP server. If the password is not specified and
the server requires it, ftp will prompt the user for it (after disabling local echo).
If an account field is not specified, and the FTP server requires it, the user will
be prompted for it. If an account field is specified, an account command will be
relayed to the remote server after the login sequence is completed if the remote
server did not require it for logging in. Unless ftp is invoked with auto-login
disabled, this process is done automatically on initial connection to the FTP
server.
verbose

Toggle verbose mode. In verbose mode, all responses from the FTP server
are displayed to the user. In addition, if verbose is on, when a file transfer
completes, statistics regarding the efficiency of the transfer are reported. By
default, verbose is on.

Command arguments which have embedded spaces may be inclosed within citation characters ".

10.3 Environment variables in use

ftp accesses the following environment variables.
HOME

Used for locating a .netrc file, if one exists.

NETRC

Alternate location of the .netrc file, taking precedence over the standard location.

SHELL

For determining the default shell interpreter.

10.4 Aborting a file transfer

To abort a file transfer, use the terminal interrupt key (usually C-c). Sending transfers
will be immediately halted. Receiving transfers will be halted by sending a FTP protocol
command ABOR to the remote server, discarding any further data received. The speed at
which this is accomplished depends upon the remote servers support for ABOR processing.
If the remote server does not support the ABOR command, an ftp> prompt will not appear
until the remote server has completed sending the requested file.
The terminal interrupt key sequence will be ignored when ftp has completed any local
processing and is awaiting a reply from the remote server. A long delay in this mode may
result from the ABOR processing described above, or from unexpected behavior by the remote
server, including violations of the FTP protocol. If the delay results from unexpected remote
server behavior, the local ftp program must be killed by hand.

10.5 File naming conventions

Files specified as arguments to ftp commands are processed according to the following
rules.
1. If the file name - is specified, standard input (for reading) or standard output (for
writing) is used.

Chapter 10: ftp: FTP client

27

2. If the first character of the file name is |, the remainder of the argument is interpreted
as a shell command. ftp then forks a shell, using popen with the argument supplied,
and reads/writes from standard input/output. If the shell command includes spaces,
the argument must be quoted; e.g. "ls -lt".
A particularly useful example of this mechanism in action, is
ftp> dir . |less
which allows the user to scroll through a long directory listing.
3. Failing the above checks, if globbing is enabled, local file names are expanded according
to the rules used by csh; c.f. the glob command. If the ftp command expects a single
local file (e.g. put), only the first filename generated by the globbing operation is used.
4. For the commands mget and get with unspecified local file name, the local file name is
set to the remote file name, which may be altered by a case, ntrans, or nmap settings.
The resulting file name may then be modified if runique is set.
5. For the commands mput and put with unspecified remote file name, the remote file
name is copied from the local file name, which may be altered by a ntrans or nmap
settings. The resulting file name may also be modified by the remote server if sunique
is set.

10.6 File transfer parameters

The FTP specification includes many parameters which may affect a file transfer. The type
may be one of ascii, image (binary), ebcdic, and local byte size (for PDP-10s and
PDP-20s mostly). ftp supports the ascii and image types of file transfer, plus local
byte size 8 for tenex mode transfers.
ftp supports only the default values for the remaining file transfer parameters: mode,
form, and struct.
An error in the treatment of carriage returns in the 4.2BSD ascii-mode transfer code
has been corrected by the present implementation. This correction may result in corrupt
transfers of binary files to and from 4.2BSD servers, when done using the ascii type. Avoid
this problem by using the binary image type.

10.7 The .netrc file

The .netrc file contains login and initialization information used by the auto-login process.
It generally resides in the users home directory, but a location outside of the home directory
can be set using the environment variable NETRC. Both locations are overridden by the
command line option -N. The selected file must be a regular file, or access will be denied.
The following tokens are recognized; they may be separated by spaces, tabs, or new-lines:
machine name
Identify a remote machine name. The auto-login process searches the .netrc
file for a machine token that matches the remote machine specified on the ftp
command line or as an open command argument. Once a match is made, the
subsequent .netrc tokens are processed, stopping when the end of file is reached
or another machine or a default token is encountered.

Chapter 10: ftp: FTP client

default

28

This is the same as machine name except that default matches any name. There
can be only one default token, and it must be after all machine tokens. This is
normally used as:
default login anonymous password user@site
thereby giving the user automatic anonymous ftp login to machines not specified
in .netrc. This can be overridden by using the -n flag to disable auto-login.

login name
Identify a user on the remote machine. If this token is present, the auto-login
process will initiate a login using the specified name.
password string
Supply a password. If this token is present, the auto-login process will supply
the specified string if the remote server requires a password as part of the login
process. Note that if this token is present in the .netrc file for any user other
than anonymous, ftp will abort the auto-login process if the .netrc is readable
by anyone besides the user.
account string
Supply an additional account password. If this token is present, the auto-login
process will supply the specified string if the remote server requires an additional
account password, or the auto-login process will initiate an ACCT command if it
does not.
macdef name
Define a macro. This token functions like the ftp macdef command functions.
A macro is defined with the specified name; its contents begin with the next
.netrc line and continue until a null line (consecutive new-line characters) is
encountered. If a macro named init is defined, it is automatically executed as
the last step in the auto-login process.

Chapter 11: rcp: Copy files between machines

29

11 rcp: Copy files between machines

rcp copies files between machines. Each file or directory argument is either a remote file
name of the form rname@rhost:path, or a local file name (containing no : characters,
or a / before any :s).
Synopsis:
rcp [option]... old-file new-file
rcp [option]... files... directory

11.1 Command line options

-4
--ipv4

Use only IPv4.

-6
--ipv6

Use only IPv6.

-d directory
--target-directory=directory
Copy all source arguments into directory.
-f
--from

(Server mode only.) Copying from remote host.

-k realm
--realm=realm
The option requests rcp to obtain tickets for the remote host in realm realm
instead of the remote hosts realm.
-K
--kerberos
Turns off all Kerberos authentication.
-p
--preserve
Causes rcp to attempt to preserve (duplicate) in its copies the modification
times and modes of the source files, ignoring the umask. By default, the mode
and owner of the target file are preserved if the target itself already exists;
otherwise the mode of the source file is modified by the umask setting on the
destination host.
-r
--recursive
If any of the source files are directories, rcp copies each subtree rooted at that
name; in this case the destination must be a directory.
-t
--to

(Server mode only.) Copying to remote host.

-x
--encrypt
Turns on encryption for all data passed via the rcp session. This may impact
response time and CPU utilization, but provides increased security.

Chapter 11: rcp: Copy files between machines

30

rcp doesnt detect all cases where the target of a copy might be a file in cases where
only a directory should be legal.
rcp can be confused by any output generated by commands in a .login, .profile, or
.cshrc file on the remote host.
The destination user and hostname may have to be specified as rhost.rname when the
destination machine is running the 4.2BSD version of rcp.

Chapter 12: rexec: a remote execution program

31

12 rexec: a remote execution program

rexec is a program that executes a program on another host.
Synopsis:
rexec --user=login --password=pass --host=host \
[OPTION] command

12.1 Command line options

-4
--ipv4

Use only IPv4 connections as all times.

-6
--ipv6

Use only IPv6 connections.

-a
--ipany

Allow any address family for connections. This is the default.

-e
--error=port
Specify the TCP port to use for stderr redirection, in case it is not specified a
random port will be used.
-h
--host=name
Specify the host with whom to connect: symbolic name or address.
-n
--noerr

If specified, an error stream will not be created.

-p
--password=passwd
Specify the password for logging-in. The special value consisting of a single
dash - will make rexec read a single line from stdin. This input is then used
as password and is passed as such to the remote server. Thus it is possible to
hide vital access information slightly better than the full disclosure implicit in
the text of a command line option.
-P
--port=num
Specify to which numerical port a connection shall be sought. If it is not
specified, then use port 512/tcp by default.
-u
--user=name
Specify the user with whom to log into the server.

Chapter 13: rlogin: Remote login

32

13 rlogin: Remote login

The rlogin command starts a terminal session on the specified remote host, provided the
required authentication is successful. The remote terminal type is the same as that given
in the TERM local environment variable. The terminal and the window size stay the same,
if the remote host supports them, and any changes in size are transferred as need may be.
When using the rlogin command, you can create a link in your path, using a host name
as the link name. For example:
# ln -s /usr/bin/rlogin hostname
# hostname -8
Afterwards, the use of hostname will automatically invoke rlogin to direct a log in request
to the remote host named hostname.
rlogin allows access to the remote host without the use of a password. The prerequisite
is a suitable specification in ~/.rhosts. For details, See Section rcmd in The GNU C
Library Reference Manual.

13.1 Command line options

The options are as follows :
-4
--ipv4

Use only IPv4.

-6
--ipv6

Use only IPv6.

-8
--8-bit

-d
--debug

Allows an eight-bit input data path at all times; otherwise parity bits are
stripped except when the remote sides stop and start characters are other
than C-S/C-Q.
Turns on socket debugging on the TCP sockets used for communication with
the remote host.

-e char
--escape=char
Allows user specification of the escape character, which is ~ by default. This
specification may be as a literal character, or as an octal value in the form
\nnn.
-E
--no-escape
Stops any character from being recognized as an escape character. When used
with the -8 option, this provides a completely transparent connection.
-l user
--user=user
By default, the remote username is the same as the local username. This option,
and the user@host format, allow the remote user name to be made explicit,
or changed.

Chapter 13: rlogin: Remote login

33

The next three options are available only if the program has been compiled with support
for Kerberos authentication.
-k realm
--realm=realm
The option requests rlogin to obtain tickets for the remote host in realm realm
instead of the remote hosts realm.
-K
--kerberos
Turns off all Kerberos authentication.
-x
--encrypt
Turns on encryption for all data passed via the rlogin session. This may impact
response time and CPU utilization, but provides increased security.

13.2 Escape characters and flow control

As long as the connection stands, the client program rsh is observing the input stream in
order to detect so called escape sequences, allowing the user to execute some local actions
without having to tear down the remote connection.
The sequences consist of two characters, the first of which always is the distinguished
character escape-char. The following sequences are supported:
escape-char . disconnects from the remote host.
escape-char C-d does the same. (Termios character VEOF.)
escape-char C-z suspends the session, halting the remote process, but keeping it ready
for resumed processing. The user is given access to a local shell. (Termios character
VSUSP.)
escape-char delayed-suspend-char implements a half-way suspend, in the sense of
stopping local input from reaching the remote side, but still displaying all output from
the remote host on the local terminal. The remote process is still running, but the
local user is given a local shell until the resuming the original command. Normally,
only BSD systems offer this mode. (Termios character VDSUSP.)
By default, the character tilde ~ is assigned to escape-char, but it can be changed using the
option --escape. The processing of escape sequences can even be disable using the option
--no-escape. On BSD systems, delayed-suspend-char is usually set to C-Y. It displays as
dsusp using stty.
All echoing takes place at the remote site, so that the rlogin is transparent except
possibly for transmission delays. Flow control via C-S and C-Q, if at all supported, will stop
and start the flow of data on the local terminal. Flushing of input and output on interrupts
is also handled properly.
On the server side the iruserok and ruserok functions are used to authenticate the
connection request, unless Kerberised mode is in effect. See the appropriate man pages for
more information.

Chapter 13: rlogin: Remote login

34

13.3 Kerberos Authentication

If rlogin was compiled with kerberos support, options -x, -k, -K are available.
Each user may have a private authorization list in the file .k5login in their home
directory. Each line in this file should contain a Kerberos principal name of the
form principal/instance@realm. If the originating user is authenticated to one of
the principals named in .k5login, access is granted to the account. The principal
accountname@localrealm is granted access if there is no .k5login file. Otherwise a
login and password will be prompted for on the remote machine as in login. To avoid
certain security problems, the .k5login file must be owned by the remote user. If
Kerberos authentication fails, a warning message is printed and the standard Berkeley
rlogin is used instead.

Chapter 14: rsh: Remote shell

35

14 rsh: Remote shell

rsh executes commands on a remote host and copies its local standard input to that of
the remote command, as well as the remote standard output to the local standard output,
and the remote standard error to the local standard error. Locally raised interrupt, quit
and terminate signals are all propagated to the remote command. Normally rsh terminates
when the remote command does so.
When using the rsh command, you can for convenience create a link in your path, using
a host name as name of the link. For example:
# ln -s /usr/bin/rsh hostname
# hostname ls
Afterwards, hostname will be passed to rsh as host name whenever the command hostname
is issued.
rsh allows access to the remote host without the use of a password. The prerequisite
is a suitable specification in ~/.rhosts. For details, See Section rcmd in The GNU C
Library Reference Manual.
If no command is specified for rsh ar argument following the host name, then you will
be logged in on the remote host using rlogin.

14.1 Command line options

The options are as follows :
-4
--ipv4

Use only IPv4.

-6
--ipv6

Use only IPv6.

-d
--debug

Turns on socket debugging used for communication with the remote host.

-l user
--user=user
By default, the remote username is the same as the local username. The -l
option and the username@host format allow the remote user name to be specified. Kerberos authentication is used, whenever available, and authorization is
determined as in rlogin (see Chapter 13 [rlogin invocation], page 32).
-n
--no-input
Use /dev/null for all input, telling the server side that we send no material.
This can prevent the remote process from blocking, should it optionally accept
more input. The option is void together with encryption.
The next three options are available only if the program has been compiled with support
for Kerberos authentication.

Chapter 14: rsh: Remote shell

36

-k realm
--realm=realm
The option requests rsh to obtain tickets for the remote host in realm realm
instead of the remote hosts realm.
-K
--kerberos
Turns off all Kerberos authentication.
-x
--encrypt
Turns on encryption for all data passed via the rsh session. This may impact
response time and CPU utilization, but provides increased security.
Finally, some compatibility options are present:
-8
--8-bit
-e char
--escape=char
-E
--no-escape
Ignored during normal operation, but passed on to rlogin when rsh is invoked
without a command argument.

14.2 Note on stream redirections

Beware that non-quoted shell metacharacters are interpreted on the local machine, while
quoted metacharacters are interpreted on the remote machine. For example:
rsh otherhost cat remotefile >> localfile
rsh otherhost cat remotefile ">>" otherfile
The first command appends the contents of remotefile, as found on the remote host, to
the file localfile on the local host, since the local shell will intercept the redirection and
will thus receive whatever the remote process directs to stdout.
In contrast, the second command will append the contents of the same file remotefile
to a file named otherfile again, but this time the file is located on the remote host. The
effect of quoting the redirection operator is to execute the command
cat remotefile >> localfile
entirely on the remote most, whence stdout at the remote host will have nothing to transmit
to the listening local host!.

Chapter 15: talk: a communication program

37

15 talk: a communication program

talk is a visual communication program which copies lines from your terminal to that of
another user.
Synopsis:
talk person [ttyname]

15.1 Invoking
The command line arguments are as follows:
person

If you wish to talk to someone on your own machine, then person is just the
other persons login name. If you wish to talk to a user on another host, then
person is of the form user@host.

ttyname

If you wish to talk to a local user who is logged in more than once, the argument
ttyname may be used to indicate the appropriate terminal name, where ttyname
typically is of the form ttyXX, or pts/X.

When first called, talk sends a message to the addressed user:

Message from TalkDaemon@his_machine...
talk: connection requested by your_name@your_machine.
talk: respond with: talk your_name@your_machine
At this point, the recipient of the message could elect to accept the call and to establish a
connection by typing:
talk your_name@your_machine
It doesnt matter from which machine the recipient replies, as long as his login-name is
the same. Once communication is established, the two parties may type text simultaneously,
with their output appearing in separate windows. Typing C-L will cause the screen to be
reprinted, while erase, kill, and word kill characters will behave normally. In addition, C-D
will cause both windows to be locally cleared of all text. This keystroke will appear as a
simple ^D on the remote terminal, though. It signals to the other party that you yourself
have just cleared your terminal of all text.
To exit, just type an interrupt character C-C; talk then moves the cursor to the bottom
of the screen and restores the terminal to its previous state.
The ability to talk may be enabled or disabled by use of the mesg command. It is system
dependent whether this message passing is enabled at the outset of a terminal session.
Certain commands, in particular nroff and pr, disable messages in order to prevent messy
output.

Chapter 16: telnet: User interface to TELNET

38

16 telnet: User interface to TELNET

Login to a remote system HOST, optionally using a (non-standard) service port PORT.
Synopsis:
telnet [OPTION...] [HOST [PORT]]

16.1 Command line options

-4
--ipv4

Use only IPv4.

-6
--ipv6

Use only IPv6.

-8
--binary

Use an 8-bit data path.

-a
--login

Attempt automatic login.

-c
--no-rc

Do not read the users file $HOME/.telnetrc.

-d
--debug

Turn on socket level debugging.

-e char
--escape=char
Use char as escape character.
-E
--no-escape
Do not use an escape character.
-k realm
--realm=realm
Request Kerberos realm realm instead of whatever is declared as default realm
in the systems or users settings.
-K
--no-login
Do not automatically login to the remote system.
-l user
--user=user
Attempt automatic login as user.
-L
--binary-output
Use an 8-bit data path for output only.
-n file
--trace=file
Record trace information into file.

Chapter 16: telnet: User interface to TELNET

-r
--rlogin

39

Display a user-interface similar to that of rlogin.

-x
--encrypt
If possible, encrypt the data stream.
-X atype
--disable-auth=atype
Disable authentication of type atype. Use this option multiple times if more
than one type is to be disabled. Standard choices are null, kerberos_v4,
and kerberos_v5.

Chapter 17: tftp: TFTP client

40

17 tftp: TFTP client

tftp is the user interface to the Internet TFTP, Trivial File Transfer Protocol, which allows
users to transfer files to and from a remote machine. The remote host may be specified on
the command line, in which case tftp uses host as the default host for future transfers.
Synopsis:
tftp [option]... host

17.1 Commands
Once tftp is running, it issues the prompt and recognizes the following commands:
? command-name
Print help information.
ascii

Shorthand for mode ascii

binary

Shorthand for mode binary

connect host-name [port]

Set the host (and optionally port) for transfers. Note that the TFTP protocol,
unlike the FTP protocol, does not maintain connections between transfers;
thus, the connect command does not actually create a connection, but merely
remembers what host is to be used for transfers. You do not have to use the
connect command; the remote host can be specified as part of the get or put
commands.
get file-name
get remotename localname
get file...
Get a file, or a set of files, from the specified sources. The source can be in one of
two forms: a file name on the remote host, if the host has already been specified,
or a string of the form host:filename to specify both a host and file name at
the same time. If the latter form is used, the last hostname specified becomes
the default for future transfers. When specifying a numeric IPv6 address as
host part, then this address must be enclosed between square brackets, since
it contains colons and would interfere with the delimiter before the file name.
Brackets are optional for IPv4 addresses.
tftp> get [2001:1234::12]:issue
mode transfer-mode
Set the mode for transfers; transfer-mode may be one of ascii or binary.
The default is ascii.
put file
put localfile remotefile
put file... remote-directory
Put a file or set of files to the specified remote file or directory. The destination
can be in one of two forms: a filename on the remote host, if the host has
already been specified, or a string of the form host:filename to specify both

Chapter 17: tftp: TFTP client

41

a host and filename at the same time. If the latter form is used, the hostname
specified becomes the default for future transfers. If the remote-directory
form is used, the remote host is assumed to be a UNIX machine. The same
use of square brackets for enclosing numeric IPv6 addresses applies here, as was
mentioned for the command get.
quit

Exit tftp. An end of file also exits.

rexmt retransmission-timeout
Set the per-packet retransmission timeout, in seconds.
status

Show current status.

timeout total-transmission-timeout
Set the total transmission timeout, in seconds.
trace

Toggle packet tracing.

verbose

Toggle verbose mode.

Because there is no user-login or validation within the tftp protocol, the remote site will
probably have some sort of file-access restrictions in place. The exact methods are specific
to each site and therefore difficult to document here.

Chapter 18: inetd: Internet super-server

42

18 inetd: Internet super-server

inetd program should be run at boot time by /etc/rc. It then listens for connections
on certain internet sockets. When a connection is found on one of its sockets, it decides
what service the socket corresponds to, and invokes a program to service the request. The
server program is invoked with the service socket as its standard input, output and error
descriptors. After the program is finished, inetd continues to listen on the socket (except
in some cases which will be described below). Essentially, inetd allows running one daemon
to invoke several others, reducing load on the system.
There are two types of services that inetd can start: standard and TCPMUX. A standard
service has a well-known port assigned to it; it may be a service that implements an official
Internet standard or is a BSD-specific service. As described in RFC 1078, TCPMUX services
are nonstandard services that do not have a well-known port assigned to them. They are
invoked from inetd when a program connects to the tcpmux well-known port and specifies
the service name. This feature is useful for adding locally-developed servers.

18.1 Invocation
Normally, inetd is invoked without any arguments. It does, however, support several
command line options. These are:
-d
--debug

Turns on debugging. With this option, inetd stays in foreground and prints
additional debugging information of stderr.

--environment
Pass local and remote socket information in environment variables.
Section 18.5 [Inetd Environment], page 45.

See

-p[file]
--pidfile[=file]
Use file as location to store process ID of the running server process, thus
overriding the default location. Setting an empty argument will disable the use
of a file for storing the process ID.
--resolve
Resolve IP addresses when setting environment variables. See Section 18.5
[Inetd Environment], page 45.
-R rate
--rate=rate
Specify the maximum number of times a service can be invoked in one minute;
the default is 1000.

18.2 Configuration file

Upon execution, inetd reads its configuration information from configuration files and
directories named on the command line. By default these are /etc/inetd.conf and
/etc/initd.d. If the configuration pathname is a directory, all files in the directory are

Chapter 18: inetd: Internet super-server

43

read and interpreted like a configuration file. All of the configuration files are read and the
results are merged.
There must be an entry for each field in the configuration file, with entries for each field
separated by a tab or a space. Comments are denoted by a # at the beginning of a line.
The available fields of the configuration file are summarized in the table below (optional
parts are enclosed in square brackets):
[service node:]service name
The service-name entry is the name of a valid service in the file /etc/services.
For internal services (see Section 18.3 [Built-in services], page 44), the service name must be the official name of the service (that is, the first entry in
/etc/services), or a numeric representation thereof. For TCPMUX services,
the value of the service name field consists of the string tcpmux followed
by a slash and the locally-chosen service name (see Section 18.4 [TCPMUX],
page 45).
An optional service node prefix is allowed for internet services. When
present, it supplies the local addresses inetd should use when listening for
that service. Service node consists of a comma-separated list of addresses.
Both symbolic host names and numeric IP addresses are allowed. Symbolic
hostnames are looked up in DNS service. If a hostname has multiple address
mappings, inetd creates a socket to listen on each address.
To avoid repeating an address that occurs frequently, a line with a host address
specifier and colon, but no further fields is allowed, e.g.:
127.0.0.1,192.168.0.5:
The address specifier from such a line is remembered and used for all further
lines lacking an explicit host specifier. Such a default address remains in effect
until another such line or end of the configuration is encountered, whichever
occurs first.
A special hostname * stands for the wildcard address. When used in a normal
configuration line, it causes the default address specifier to be ignored for that
line. When used in a default address specification, e.g.:
*:
it causes any previous default address specifier to be forgotten.
socket type
The socket type should be one of stream, dgram, raw, rdm, or seqpacket,
depending on whether the socket is a stream, datagram, raw, reliably delivered
message, or sequenced packet socket. TCPMUX services must use stream.
protocol

The protocol must be a valid protocol as given in /etc/protocols. Examples

might be tcp or udp. TCPMUX services must use tcp. If IPv6 support
is enabled the sockets will accept both IPv4 and IPv6 connections if that is
supported by the OS. If inetd should only accept IPv4 or IPv6 connections,
add 4 or 6 to the protocol name. For example tcp4 will only accept IPv4
tcp connections and udp6 will only accept IPv6 udp connections.

Chapter 18: inetd: Internet super-server

44

wait/nowait[.max]
The wait/nowait entry specifies whether the server that is invoked by inetd
will take over the socket associated with the service access point, and thus
whether inetd should wait for the server to exit before listening for new service
requests. Datagram servers must use wait, as they are always invoked with
the original datagram socket bound to the specified service address. These
servers must read at least one datagram from the socket before exiting. If a
datagram server connects to its peer, freeing the socket so inetd can received
further messages on the socket, it is said to be a multi-threaded server; it
should read one datagram from the socket and create a new socket connected
to the peer. It should fork, and the parent should then exit to allow inetd to
check for new service requests to spawn new servers. Datagram servers which
process all incoming datagrams on a socket and eventually time out are said to
be single-threaded. comsat and talkd are both examples of the latter type
of datagram server. tftpd is an example of a multi-threaded datagram server.
Servers using stream sockets generally are multi-threaded and use the nowait
entry. Connection requests for these services are accepted by inetd, and the
server is given only the newly-accepted socket connected to a client of the service. Most stream-based services and all TCPMUX services operate in this
manner. For such services, the number of running instances of the server
can be limitied by specifying optional max suffix (a decimal number), e.g.:
nowait.15.
Stream-based servers that use wait are started with the listening service
socket, and must accept at least one connection request before exiting. Such a
server would normally accept and process incoming connection requests until a
timeout. Other services must use nowait.
user

The user entry should contain the user name of the user as whom the server
should run. This allows for servers to be given less permission than root. An
optional form includes also a group name as a suffix, separated from the user
name by colon or a period, i.e., user:group or user.group.

server program
The server-program entry should contain the pathname of the program which is
to be executed by inetd when a request is found on its socket. If inetd provides
this service internally, this entry should be internal.
It is common usage to specify /usr/sbin/tcpd in this field.
server program arguments
The server program arguments should be just as arguments normally are, starting with argv[0], which is the name of the program. If the service is provided
internally, this entry must contain the word internal, or be empty.

18.3 Built-in services

The inetd program provides several trivial services internally by use of routines within
itself. All these services can operate both in stream and in dgram mode. They are:

Chapter 18: inetd: Internet super-server

45

echo

Send back to the originating source any data received from it. This is a debugging and measurement tool.

discard

Silently throw away any data received.

chargen

This is a character generator service. It can be operated as both stream or

dgram service. When operating in stream mode, once a connection is established a stream of data is sent out the connection (and any data received is
thrown away). This continues until the calling user terminates the connection.
When operating in dgram mode, inetd listens for UDP datagrams, and for
each received datagram, answers with a datagram containing a random number (between 0 and 512) of characters. Any data in the received datagram are
ignored.

daytime

Send back the current date and time in a human readable form. Any input is
discarded.

time

Send back the current date and time as a 32-bit integer number, nrepresenting
the number of seconds since midnight, January 1, 1900.

18.4 TCPMUX
The TCPMUX protocol.
A TCP client connects to a foreign host on TCP port 1. It sends the service
name followed by a carriage-return line-feed <CRLF>. The service name is never
case sensitive. The server replies with a single character indicating positive (+)
or negative (-) acknowledgment, immediately followed by an optional message of
explanation, terminated with a <CRLF>. If the reply was positive, the selected
protocol begins; otherwise the connection is closed. The program is passed
the TCP connection as file descriptors 0 and 1.
If the TCPMUX service name begins with a +, inetd returns the positive reply for
the program. This allows you to invoke programs that use stdin/stdout without putting
any special server code in them.
The special service name help causes inetd to list TCPMUX services in inetd.conf.
To define TCPMUX services, the configuration file must contain a tcpmux internal
definition.
Here are several example service entries for the various types of services:
ftp
stream tcp
ntalk
dgram
udp
tcpmux
stream tcp
tcpmux/+date stream tcp
tcpmux/phonebook stream tcp

nowait
wait
nowait
nowait
nowait

root /usr/libexec/ftpd
ftpd -l
nobody:tty /usr/libexec/talkd talkd
root internal
guest /bin/date
date
guest /usr/bin/phonebook
phonebook

18.5 Inetd Environment

If a connection is made with a streaming protocol (stream) and if --environment option has been given, inetd will set the following environment variables before starting the
program:

Chapter 18: inetd: Internet super-server

PROTO

46

Always TCP.

TCPLOCALIP
Local IP address of the interface which accepted the connection.
TCPLOCALPORT
Port number on which the TCP connection was established.
TCPREMOTEIP
IP address of the remote client.
TCPREMOTEPORT
Port number on the client side of the TCP connection.
Additionally, if given the --remote option, inetd sets the following environment variables:
TCPLOCALHOST
DNS name of TCPLOCALIP.
TCPREMOTEHOST
DNS name of TCPREMOTEIP.

18.6 Error Messages

The inetd server logs error messages using syslog. Important error messages and their
explanations are:
service/protocol server failing (looping), service terminated.
The number of requests for the specified service in the past minute exceeded
the limit. The limit exists to prevent a broken program or a malicious user
from swamping the system. This message may occur for several reasons:
1. there are lots of hosts requesting the service within a short time period,
2. a broken client program is requesting the service too frequently,
3. a malicious user is running a program to invoke the service in a denial of
service attack,
4. the invoked service program has an error that causes clients to retry quickly.
Use the -R option, as described above, to change the rate limit. Once the limit
is reached, the service will be reenabled automatically in 10 minutes.
service/protocol: No such user user, service ignored
service/protocol: getpwnam: user: No such user
No entry for user exists in the passwd file. The first message occurs when inetd
(re)reads the configuration file. The second message occurs when the service is
invoked.
service/protocol: No such user user, service ignored
service/protocol: getpwnam: user: No such user
No entry for user exists in the passwd file. The first message occurs when inetd
(re)reads the configuration file. The second message occurs when the service is
invoked.

Chapter 18: inetd: Internet super-server

service: cant set uid number

service: cant set gid number
The user or group ID for the entrys user is invalid.

47

Chapter 19: syslogd: system service logging faclity

48

19 syslogd: system service logging faclity

syslogd is a system service that provides error logging facility. Messages are read from the
UNIX domain socket /dev/log, from an Internet domain socket specified in /etc/services,
and from the special device /dev/klog (to read kernel messages).
syslogd creates the file /var/run/syslog.pid, and stores its process id there. This can
be used to kill or reconfigure syslogd.
The message sent to syslogd should consist of a single line. The message can contain a
priority code, which should be a preceding decimal number in angle braces, for example, <5>.
This priority code should map into the priorities defined in the include file sys/syslog.h.
syslogd [options]...
-f file
--rcfile=file
Override configuration (the default file is /etc/syslog.conf).
-D dir
--rcdir=dir
Override configuration directory (the default is /etc/syslog.d).
-P file
--pidfile=file
Override pidfile (the default file is /var/run/syslogd.pid).
-n
--no-detach
Do not enter daemon mode.
-d
--debug

Print debug information (implies -n).

-p file
--socket=file
Override default UNIX domain socket /dev/log.
-a socket Add UNIX socket to listen. An unlimited number of sockets is allowed.
-r
--inet

Receive remote messages via Internet domain socket. Without this option no
remote massages are received, since there is no listening socket. Yet sockets for
forwarding are created on the fly as needed, which might cause performance
issues on busy systems.

-b address
--bind=address
Restrict the listening Internet domain socket to a single address. The default
(given the use of -r) is a wildcard address, implying that the server listens at
every available address. Any name will be resolved, and the lookup result will
depend on the options -4, -6, and --ipany.
--no-unixaf
Do not listen on UNIX domain sockets (overrides -a and -p).

Chapter 19: syslogd: system service logging faclity

49

--no-klog
Do not listen to the kernel log device /dev/klog.
--ipany

Allow both address families: IPv4 and IPv6.

-4
--ipv4

Use only IPv4 for Internet domain sockets.

-6
--ipv6

Use only IPv6 for Internet domain sockets.

--no-forward
Do not forward any messages (overrides -h). This disables even temporary
creation of forwarding sockets, an ability which is otherwise active when the
option -r is left out.
-h
--hop

Forward messages from remote hosts.

-m interval
--mark=interval
Specify timestamp interval expressed in minutes (0 for no timestamping).
-l hostlist
Log hosts in hostlist by their hostname. Multiple lists are allowed.
-s domainlist
List of domains which should be stripped from the FQDN of hosts before logging
their name. Multiple lists are allowed.
-T
--local-time
Ignore any time contained in a received message. In its stead, record the time
of reception on the local system. This circumvents problems caused by remote
hosts with skewed clocks.

19.1 Configuration file

syslogd reads its configuration file when it starts up and whenever it receives a hangup
signal. The syslog.conf file is the main configuration file for the syslogd program. In
addition, the server looks below the directory syslog.d/ for further configuration files,
making it easy to arrange a common set of logging conventions in syslog.conf, augmented
by system and service specific drop-in configuration in syslog.d/.
Each configuration file consists of lines with two fields: a selector field which specifies
the types of messages and priorities to which the line applies, and an action field which
specifies the action to be taken if a message syslogd receives matches the selection criteria.
The selector field is separated from the action field by one or more tab or space characters.
A rule can be split in several lines if all lines except the last are terminated with a backslash
\.
There are two exceptional forms of line content. The first is the tagged selector, and
the second is a comment. The latter begins with an octothorp (#), also called hash, and
continues until end-of-line.

Chapter 19: syslogd: system service logging faclity

50

A tagged selector commences with an exclamation mark, as in !name, or with a shebang,

like #! name, and continues with a program name, a tag in the sense used by logger. It
has the effect of applying the following configuration rules only to messages submitted with
the specified tag. This selection remains in effect until another tag is selected, or until it is
reset by means of stating the program name as an asterisque *.
The selector fields are encoded as a facility, followed by a period (.), and a level, with
no intervening white-space. The facility as well as the level are case insensitive.
The facility describes the part of the system generating the message, and is one of
the following keywords: auth, authpriv, cron, daemon, kern, lpr, mail, mark,
news, syslog, user, uucp and local0 through local7. These keywords (with the
exception of mark) correspond to the similar LOG_ values specified to the openlog and
syslog library routines. See Section Syslog in The GNU C Library Reference Manual,
for details.
The level describes the severity of the message, and is a keyword from the following ordered list (higher to lower): emerg, alert, crit, err, warning, notice and debug.
These keywords correspond to the similar LOG_ values specified to the syslog library routine.
See Section syslog and vsyslog in The GNU C Library Reference Manual, for a further
descriptions of both the facility and level keywords and their significance.
If a received message matches the specified facility and is of the specified level (or a
higher level), the action specified in the action field will be taken.
Multiple selectors may be specified for a single action by separating them with semicolon
(;) characters. It is important to note, however, that each selector can modify the ones
preceding it.
Multiple facilities may be specified for a single level by separating them with comma
(,) characters.
An asterisk (*) can be used to specify all facilities or all levels. Two asterisks (**)
specifie all facilities not named previously in the configuration file.
By default, a level applies to all messages with the same or higher level. The equal
(=) character can be prepended to a level to restrict this line of the configuration file to
messages with the very same level.
An exclamation mark (!) prepended to a level or the asterisk means that this line of
the configuration file does not apply to the specified level (and higher ones). In conjunction
with the equal sign, you can exclude single levels as well.
The special facility mark receives a message at priority info every 20 minutes. This
is not enabled by a facility field containing an asterisk.
The special level none disables a particular facility.
The action field of each line specifies the action to be taken when the selector field selects
a message. There are five forms:
A pathname (beginning with a leading slash). Selected messages are appended to the
file.
You may prepend a minus (-) to the path to omit syncing the file after each message
log. This can cause data loss at system crashes, but increases performance for programs
which use logging extensively.

Chapter 19: syslogd: system service logging faclity

51

A named pipe, beginning with a vertical bar (|) followed by a pathname. The pipe
must be created with mkfifo before syslogd reads its configuration file. This feature
is especially useful for debugging.
A hostname (preceded by an at (@) sign). Selected messages are forwarded to syslogd
on the named host.
A comma separated list of users. Selected messages are written to those users if they
are logged in.
An asterisk. Selected messages are written to all logged-in users.
Blank lines and lines whose first non-blank character is a hash (#) character are
ignored.
A configuration file might appear as follows:
# Log all kernel messages, authentication messages of
# level notice or higher and anything of level err or
# higher to the console.
# Dont log private authentication messages!
*.err;kern.*;auth.notice;authpriv.none /dev/console
# Log anything (except mail) of level info or higher.
# Dont log private authentication messages!
*.info;mail.none;authpriv.none
/var/log/messages
# The authpriv file has restricted access.
authpriv.*
/var/log/secure
# Log all the mail messages in one place.
mail.*
/var/log/maillog
# Everybody gets emergency messages, plus log them on another
# machine.
*.emerg
*
*.emerg
@arpa.berkeley.edu
# Root and Eric get alert and higher messages.
*.alert
root,eric
# Simplify security auditing, by collecting sudo uses.
! sudo
*.info
/var/log/sudo
# Collect time server reports.
#! ntpd
*.*
# Stop selecting on message tags.
!*

/var/log/ntpd

Chapter 19: syslogd: system service logging faclity

52

# Save mail and news errors of level err and higher in a

# special file.
uucp,news.crit
/var/log/spoolerr
The effects of multiple selectors are sometimes not intuitive.
For example
mail.crit,*.err will select the mail facility messages at the level of err or higher,
not at the level of crit or higher.

Chapter 20: ftpd: FTP daemon

53

20 ftpd: FTP daemon

ftpd is the Internet File Transfer Protocol server process. The server uses the TCP protocol
and listens at the port specified in the ftp service specification.
ftpd [option]...
-4
--ipv4

Daemon uses only IPv4 addressing. Ignored in inetd mode.

-6
--ipv6

Daemon uses only IPv6 addressing. Ignored in inetd mode.

-A
--anonymous-only
Only anonymous login is allowed.
-a auth
--auth=auth
Specify what authentication mechanism to use for incoming connections. Possible values are: kerberos, kerberos5, opie, pam, and default.
Anonymous logins will continue to work when this option is used, unless the
user ftp is removed from the system.
-D
--daemon

ftpd enters daemon-mode. That allows ftpd to be run without inetd.

-d
--debug

Debugging information is written to the syslog using facility LOG_FTP.

-l
--logging
Each successful and failed ftp session is logged using syslog with a facility
of LOG_FTP. If this option is specified twice, the retrieve (get), store (put),
append, delete, make directory, remove directory and rename operations and
their filename arguments are also logged.
--non-rfc2577
Do not follow the suggestion of RFC 2577 to suppress messages that could help
an attacker to conduct user name enumeration. This option allows the server
to return with an error message immediately upon receipt of a user name. Such
information includes non-existence claims and expiration claims. The ideal
mode would otherwise be to fake the relevance of asking for a password, and
only thereafter report an invalid login.
-p pidfile
--pidfile=pidfile
Change default location of pidfile.
-q
--no-version
Quiet mode. No information about the version of the ftpd is given to the client.

Chapter 20: ftpd: FTP daemon

54

-T
--max-timeout
A client may also request a different timeout period; the maximum period
allowed may be set to timeout seconds with the -T option. The default limit is
2 hours.
-t timeout
--timeout=timeout
The inactivity timeout period is set to timeout seconds (the default is 15 minutes).
-u umask
--umask=umask
Set default umask, expressed in base 8.
The file /etc/nologin can be used to disable FTP access. If the file exists, ftpd displays
it and exits. If the file /etc/ftpwelcome exists, ftpd prints it before issuing the ready
message. If the file /etc/motd exists, ftpd prints it after a successful login.
If this server was compiled with PAM support, then any non-anonymous connection
request will also be checked for settings pertaining to the PAM service ftp, before finally
being accepted.
Linux-PAM is particular in that it also provides a module pam_ftp.so influencing even
anonymous access. By convention the present server relies on the functionality in that
module when built on relevant systems. However, the module is known to be partially
broken since ten years back, when one compares the claims in its manual page, so not all
claimed trickery is available!

20.1 Standards
The FTP server currently supports the following FTP requests. The letter case of any
request is ignored.
Request
ABOR
ACCT
ALLO
APPE
CDUP
CWD
DELE
EPSV
EPRT
HELP
LIST
LPRT
LPSV
MKD
MDTM

Description
abort previous command
specify account (ignored)
allocate storage (vacuously)
append to a file
change to parent of current working directory
change working directory
delete a file
extended passive transfer request
specify data connection port
give help information
give list files in a directory (ls -lgA)
specify data connection port
long passive transfer request
make a directory
show last modification time of file

Chapter 20: ftpd: FTP daemon

MODE
NLST
NOOP
PASS
PASV
PORT
PWD
QUIT
REST
RETR
RMD
RNFR
RNTO
SITE
SIZE
STAT
STOR
STOU
STRU
SYST
TYPE
USER
XCUP
XCWD
XMKD
XPWD
XRMD

55

specify data transfer mode

give name list of files in directory
do nothing
specify password
prepare for server-to-server transfer
specify data connection port
print the current working directory
terminate session
restart incomplete transfer
retrieve a file
remove a directory
specify rename-from file name
specify rename-to file name
non-standard commands
return size of file
return status of server
store a file
store a file with a unique name
specify data transfer structure
show operating system type of server system
specify data transfer type
specify user name
change to parent of current working directory (deprecated)
change working directory (deprecated)
make a directory (deprecated)
print the current working directory (deprecated)
remove a directory (deprecated)

The following non-standard, or UNIX specific, commands are supported by the SITE
request.
Request
UMASK
IDLE
CHMOD
HELP

Description
change umask, e.g. SITE UMASK 002
set idle-timer, e.g. SITE IDLE 60
change mode of a file, e.g. SITE CHMOD0 0CHMOD1 1CHMOD2
give help information.

The remaining FTP requests specified in RFC 959 are recognized, but not implemented.
The extensions MDTM, REST, and SIZE are specified in RFC 3659, while EPRT and EPSV
appear in RFC 2428, LPRT and LPSV in RFC 1639.
The ftp server will abort an active file transfer only when the ABOR command is preceded
by a Telnet Interrupt Process (IP) signal and a Telnet Synch signal in the command
Telnet stream, as described in Internet RFC 959. If a STAT command is received during a
data transfer, preceded by a Telnet IP and Synch, transfer status will be returned.
ftpd interprets file names according to the globbing conventions used by csh. This
allows users to utilize the metacharacters *?[]{}~.
The server applies the suggestions in RFC 2577, but the legacy behaviour with informational content in denials can be restored using the option --non-rfc2577.

Chapter 20: ftpd: FTP daemon

56

20.2 Authentication
ftpd authenticates users according to four rules.
1. The login name must be in the password data base, /etc/passwd, and must not have
a null password. In this case a password must be provided by the client before any file
operations can be performed.
2. The login name must not appear in the file /etc/ftpusers.
3. The user must have a standard shell.
4. If the user name is anonymous or ftp, an anonymous ftp account must be present in
the password file (user ftp). In this case the user is allowed to log in by specifying any
password (by convention an email address for the user should be used as the password).
A further access mechanism is provided by the file /etc/ftpchroot. A user mentioned
therein will have all access confined to the subtree rooted at the home directory specified
in /etc/passwd.
In the case of anonymous access, ftpd takes special measures to restrict the clients
access privileges. The server always performs a chroot to the home directory of the ftp
user.
In order that system security is not breached, it is recommended that the ftp subtree
be constructed with care, following these rules:
~ftp

Make the home directory owned by root and not writable by anyone.

~ftp/bin

Make this directory owned by root and not writable by anyone (mode 555).
The program ls must be present to support the list command, unless the server
was compiled with libls support. This program should be mode 111.

~ftp/etc

Make this directory owned by root and not writable by anyone (mode 555).
The files passwd and group must be present for the ls command to be able to
produce owner names rather than numbers. The password field in passwd is
not used, and should not contain real passwords. The file motd, if present, will
be printed after a successful login. These files should be mode 444.

~ftp/pub

Make this directory mode 777 and owned by ftp. Guests can then place files
which are to be accessible via the anonymous account in this directory.

20.3 Configuration files

/etc/ftpchroot
List of users to enclose in a chrooted directory. The anonymous user ftp is
always considered to be a member of this list, explicit or not.
/etc/ftpusers
List of unwelcome/restricted users, always to be denied access.
/etc/ftpwelcome
Welcome notice printed before server identification and any authentication exchange.
/etc/motd
Welcome notice presented after completed login.

Chapter 20: ftpd: FTP daemon

57

/etc/nologin
If present, the contents are displayed and all further access is refused.

20.4 File format of ftpusers and ftpchroot.

The files /etc/ftpusers and /etc/ftpchroot share a common file format. For better
conformity with other implementations, each line is understood as consisting of fields separated by spaces, or by horizontal tabulators. Only the first non-empty field is examined
at present. Both files are used for matching against a user name, desiring to use the FTP
service.
Whenever the first printable character is a hash #, the input line is taken as a comment,
and is ignored. Lines lacking non-empty fields are likewise ignored.
A field consisting of a single at-sign @, is treated as a wildcard and matches every input.
A field commencing with an at-sign @ and then continuing with an identifier, is understood as giving the name of a group. Should this name exist in /etc/groups, and the user
name be a member of this same group, then the user name matches.
In all other cases, the field is taken as the identifier of a user, with which the requesting
user is compared for verbatim match.
It is worthwhile to observe from the above cases, that a single @ on a line by itself in
/etc/ftpchroot, will enforce chrooting upon every user allowed to access the FTP service.
This gives a Draconian, protective configuration.

Chapter 21: rexecd: server for rexec

58

21 rexecd: server for rexec

rexecd is the server for the rexec routine. The server provides remote execution facilities
with authentication based on user names and passwords. It passes error messages and
notices to the syslog facility LOG_DAEMON.
rexecd [option]...
rexecd listens for service requests at the port indicated in the exec service specification.
When a service request is received the following protocol is initiated:
1. The server reads characters from the socket up to a NUL (\0) byte. The resultant
string is interpreted as an ASCII number, base 10.
2. If the number received in step 1 is non-zero, it is interpreted as the port number of a
secondary stream to be used for the stderr. A second connection is then created to the
specified port on the clients machine.
3. A NUL terminated user name of at most 16 characters is retrieved on the initial socket.
4. A NUL terminated, unencrypted password of at most 16 characters is retrieved on the
initial socket.
5. A NUL terminated command to be passed to a shell is retrieved on the initial socket.
The length of the command is limited by the upper bound on the size of the systems
argument list.
6. rexecd then validates the user as is done at login time and, if the authentication was
successful, changes to the users home directory, and establishes the user and group
protections of the user. If any of these steps fail the connection is aborted with a
diagnostic message returned.
7. A NUL byte is returned on the initial socket and the command line is passed to the
normal login shell of the user. The shell inherits the network connections established
by rexecd.

21.1 Invoking
The only option is as follows:
-l
--logging
Raise logging level for this service; use more than once for increased verbosity.
The syslog facility in use is LOG_DAEMON.
Should rexecd have been built with PAM support, it reads any setting specified for a
service named rexec.

21.2 Diagnostics
Except for the last one listed below, all diagnostic messages are returned on the initial
socket, after which any network connections are closed. An error is indicated by a leading
byte with a value of 1 (0 is returned in step 7 above upon successful completion of all the
steps prior to the command execution).
username too long
The name is longer than 16 characters.

Chapter 21: rexecd: server for rexec

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password too long

The password is longer than 16 characters.
command too long
The command line passed exceeds the size of the argument list (as configured
into the system).
Login incorrect.
No password file entry for the user name existed.
Password incorrect.
The wrong password was supplied.
No remote directory.
The chdir command to the home directory failed.
Try again.
A fork by the server failed.
<shellname>: ...
The users login shell could not be started. This message is returned on the
connection associated with the stderr, and is not ...
Note, that indicating Login incorrect as opposed to Password incorrect is a security breach which allows people to probe a system for users with null passwords.

Chapter 22: rlogind: Remote login server

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22 rlogind: Remote login server

rlogind is the server for the rlogin client program (see Chapter 13 [rlogin invocation],
page 32). The server provides a remote login facility with authentication based on privileged
port numbers from trusted hosts, or using authentication according to a Kerberos protocol.
rlogind in daemon mode listens for service requests at the port indicated in the login
service specification. A common alternative is to have the super-server inetd listen at the
same port, which then invokes rlogind as demand arises. In Kerberised mode, the port is
either eklogin, or klogin, depending on preset encryption, or none.
The standard authentication procedure assumes the integrity of each client machine and
of the connecting medium. This is insecure, since it transmits credentials in clear text, but
is useful in an open environment. This weakness is reduced when running the service
in Kerberised version, at the price of a larger complexity of the supporting infrastructure.
Using an encrypting Kerberised service even avoids all clear text processing.

22.1 Invoking
The available options are as follows:
-4
--ipv4

Accept only IPv4 connections in daemon mode.

-6
--ipv6

Only IPv6 connections in daemon mode.

-a
--verify-hostname
Ask hostname for verification.
-d[max]
--daemon[=max]
Run in background daemon mode, optionally setting the maximal number of
simultaneously running client sessions. The default limit is 10.
-D[level]
--debug[=level]
Set debug level, not implemented.
-l
--no-rhosts
Ignore clients .rhosts file.
-L name
--local-domain=name
Set local domain name, to which the server host belongs. By default the domain
is recovered from the canonical name of the host.
-n
--no-keepalive
Do not set SO KEEPALIVE on sockets. This decreases the ability to close lost
connections to once active clients.

Chapter 22: rlogind: Remote login server

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-o
--allow-root
Allow the root user to login, which is disallowed by default.
-p port
--port=port
Listen on given port. Applicable only in daemon mode.
-r
--reverse-required
Require reverse resolvability of remote hosts numerical IP.
For sites requiring improved authentication, Kerberos authentication is a viable decision,
and possibly even with encryption for enhanced integrity. Three additional options are
available for an executable rlogind compiled with Kerberos support.
-k
--kerberos
Activate Kerberos authentication on all incoming requests.
-S name
--server-principal=name
Set Kerberos server name, overriding canonical hostname.
-x
--encrypt
Activate encryption of all data passed via the rlogind session. This may impact
response time and CPU utilization, but provides increased security. Only for
Kerberised mode of operation.
Should rlogind have been built with PAM support, it reads any setting specified for
a service named either rlogin or krlogin, the latter name for clients using Kerberised
authentication.

22.2 Kerberos specific details

The option -k is mandatory for Kerberised operation mode, while addition of the option
-x will also demand encryption of every request to this particular server.
rlogind will, in Kerberised operation mode, as default instantiate itself using the principal name host/canonical_name@DEFAULT_REALM, a compound arranged from the running
hosts canonical name, and from the default realm configured for the system. Either of these
can be overridden using the option --server-principal, as follows:
rlogind -k -S alias.server.our
rlogind --kerberos [email protected]
rlogind -k -x -S rlogin/[email protected]
When overriding only the realm, with the option -S, an initial at-sign is mandatory.

22.3 Protocol details

When a service request is received, in non-Kerberised mode, the following protocol is initiated:

Chapter 22: rlogind: Remote login server

62

1. The server checks the clients source port. If the port is not in the range 512-1023, the
server aborts the connection.
2. The server next checks the clients source address and requests the corresponding host
name. If the hostname cannot be determined, the numerical representation of the host
address is used. If the hostname is in the same domain as the server (according to the
last two components of the domain name), or if the option -a is in effect, the address
for the hostname is requested, verifying that the name and address correspond. Normal
authentication is considered as failed, should this address verification fail.
Once the source port and address have been checked, rlogind proceeds with the authentication process as described in Chapter 23 [rshd invocation], page 63. The server then
allocates a pseudo terminal, and manipulates file descriptors so that the slave half of the
pseudo terminal becomes the stdin, stdout, and stderr for a login process. The login process is an instance of the login program, invoked with the option -f if authentication had
succeeded. If automatic authentication had failed, the user is prompted to log in as if on a
standard terminal line.
The parent of the login process manipulates the master side of the pseudo terminal,
operating as an intermediary between the login process and the client instance of the rlogin
program. In normal operation, the packet protocol described in PTY is invoked to provide
flow control using C-S/C-Q, and to propagate interrupt signals to the remote program. The
login process transmits the client terminals baud rate, and its terminal type, as found in
the environment variable TERM. The screen or window size of the terminal is requested from
the client, and any later window size changes at the clients side are propagated to the
pseudo terminal as well.
Transport-level keepalive messages are enabled unless the option -n was in effect when
starting rlogind. The use of keepalive messages allows sessions to be timed out, should
the client crash, or otherwise become unreachable.
See Section ruserok in The GNU C Library Reference Manual, for details.

22.4 Diagnostics
The exchange protocol states that a negotiation reaches a successful completion as soon as
the server rlogind transmits back to the client a single null byte, marking the completion
of all information exchange.
Error conditions are instead transmitted back to the client as a message containing an
initial byte value 1, followed by a C-string indicating the cause of failure. All network
connections are closed at the server side after this message. Some common messages follow:
Permission denied.
The client presented insufficient credentials, or the clients address is not sufficiently resolvable to pass the checks induced by options -a or -r.
Try again.
A fork by the server failed.

Chapter 23: rshd: Remote shell server

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23 rshd: Remote shell server

The rshd server is the server for the rcmd routine and, consequently, for the rsh (see
Chapter 14 [rsh invocation], page 35) program. The server provides remote execution
facilities with authentication based on privileged port numbers from trusted hosts. The
rshd server listens for service requests at the port indicated in the cmd service specification.
When a service request is received the following protocol is initiated:
1. The server checks the clients source port. If the port is not in the range 5121023,
the server aborts the connection. However, this condition is not applied for Kerberized
service.
2. The server reads characters from the socket up to a NUL (\0) byte. The resultant
string is interpreted as an ASCII number, base 10.
3. If the number received in step 2 is non-zero, it is interpreted as the port number of
a secondary stream to be used for the stderr. A second connection is then created to
the specified port on the clients machine. The source port of this second connection
is also in the range 5121023.
4. The server checks the clients source address and requests the corresponding host name.
If the hostname cannot be determined, the dot-notation representation of the host
address is used. If the hostname is in the same domain as the server (according to the
last two components of the domain name), or if the -a option is given, the addresses
for the hostname are requested, verifying that the name and address correspond. If
address verification fails, the connection is aborted with the message, Host address
mismatch.
5. A null terminated user name of at most 16 characters is retrieved on the initial socket.
This user name is interpreted as the user identity on the clients machine.
6. A null terminated user name of at most 16 characters is retrieved on the initial socket.
This user name is interpreted as a user identity to use on the servers machine.
7. A null terminated command to be passed to a shell is retrieved on the initial socket.
The length of the command is limited by the upper bound on the size of the systems
argument list.
8. Rshd then validates the user using ruserok, which uses the file /etc/hosts.equiv and
the .rhosts file found in the users home directory. The -l option prevents ruserok
from doing any validation based on the users .rhosts file, unless the user is the
superuser.
9. If the file /etc/nologin exists and the user is not the superuser, the connection is
closed.
10. A null byte is returned on the initial socket and the command line is passed to the
normal login shell of the user. The shell inherits the network connections established
by rshd.
11. Transport-level keepalive messages are enabled unless the -n option is present. The use
of keepalive messages allows sessions to be timed out if the client crashes or becomes
unreachable.
12. The -L option causes all successful accesses to be logged to syslogd (see Chapter 19
[syslogd invocation], page 48) as auth.info messages.
See Section ruserok in The GNU C Library Reference Manual, for details.

Chapter 23: rshd: Remote shell server

64

23.1 Invoking
The options are as follows:
-a
--verify-hostname
Ask hostname for verification.
-k
--kerberos
Use Kerberos authentication.
-l
--no-rhosts
Ignore .rhosts file.
-L
--log-sessions
Log successful logins.
-n
--no-keepalive
Do not set SO KEEPALIVE.
-S name
--servername=name
Set Kerberos server name, overriding canonical hostname.
-v
--vacuous
Fail any call asking for non-Kerberos authentication.
-r
--reverse-required
Demand that the clients IP address be resolvable as a host name.
Should rshd have been built with PAM support, it reads any setting specified for a service
named either rsh or krsh, the latter name for clients seeking Kerberised authentication.

23.2 Diagnostics
Except for the last one listed below, all diagnostic messages are returned on the initial
socket, after which any network connections are closed. An error is indicated by a leading
byte with a value of 1 (0 is returned in step 10 above upon successful completion of all the
steps prior to the execution of the login shell).
Locuser too long
The name of the user on the clients machine is longer than 16 characters.
Ruser too long
The name of the user on the remote machine is longer than 16 characters.
Command too long
The command line passed exceeds the size of the argument list (as configured
into the system).

Chapter 23: rshd: Remote shell server

65

Login incorrect
No password file entry for the user name existed.
Remote directory
The chdir command to the home directory failed.
Permission denied
The authentication procedure described above failed, or address resolution was
insufficient.
Cant make pipe.
The pipe needed for the stderr, wasnt created.
Cant fork; try again.
A fork by the server failed.
<shellname>: ...
The users login shell could not be started. This message is returned on the
connection associated with the stderr, and is not preceded by a flag byte.
The authentication procedure used here assumes the integrity of each client machine and
the connecting medium. This is insecure, but is useful in an open environment.

Chapter 24: talkd: a server for communication between users

66

24 talkd: a server for communication between

users
talkd is a server that notifies users that someone else wants to initiate a conversation. It
acts as a repository of invitations, responding to requests by clients wishing to rendezvous
for a conversation.
This implementation uses the newer protocol ntalk/udp, and is intended to be invoked
by a super-server inetd at that datagram port. It is recommended that inetd launch
talkd with ownership nobody:tty, or with tty:tty. However, this works with ACL
only if .talkrc can be assumed to be world readable for all users. This failing, the process
ownership will need to be root:tty if the ACL-mechanism is to be usable and trustworthy.
Keep in mind that this service is usable with IPv4 only, since the exchange protocol
was conceived to handle only this particular address family. This fact is independent of the
abilities of inetd.
Observe also that the server talkd depends on the name returned by hostname, for
establishing connections between interested parties. A server talkd running on a multihomed host is not able to respond to invitations for a valid host name that differs from the
name reported by hostname.
The present implementation offers ACL-mechanisms for fine grained access control.

24.1 Invoking
The following switches and options are available.
-a file
--acl=file
Read site-wide ACLs from file.
-d
--debug

Enable debugging.

-i seconds
--idle-timeout=seconds
Set idle timeout length
-l
--logging
Enable a somewhat enhanced logging verbosity, reporting attempted and
dropped connections, as well as some more unexpected events that might arise.
-r seconds
--request-ttl=seconds
Set time-to-live length for requests.
-S
--strict-policy
Apply strict ACL policy on this system. This means that the site-wide ACL
must provide explicit allow rules for admitting traffic at all.
-t seconds
--timeout=seconds
Set timeout length.

Chapter 24: talkd: a server for communication between users

67

24.2 Modus operandi

In normal operation, a client, the caller, initiates a rendezvous by sending a CTL_MSG of
type LOOK_UP to the server (see protocols/talkd.h). This causes the server to search
its invitation tables to check whether an invitation currently exists for the caller (wanting
to talk to the callee specified in the message). If the lookup fails, the caller then sends
an ANNOUNCE message causing the server to broadcast an announcement on the callees
login ports requesting contact. When the callee responds, the local server uses the recorded
invitation to respond with the appropriate rendezvous address and the caller and callee
client programs establish a stream connection through which the conversation takes place.
This implementation offers an additional mechanism, whereby a site-wide access control
list can be used to limit service access in general. For any local user, i.e., present on the
servers system, a further user owned file .talkrc is parsed, if at all present, in order to
even further fine tune access to this particular user.

24.3 Access control in talkd

The server can be run in a mode with additional access control, beyond the legacy capabilities of ntalkd. This is activated using the option -a, or equivalently --acl.
The format of this access control list is shared with the user specific file .talkrc. Normally the site-wide setting operates with a default value allow, but specifying the option
-S, or --strict-policy, changes this default action to deny. In addition, the strict policy disables the possibility that an allowing action from the user specific ACL be able to
override a denial resulting from the system-wide ACL setting.
As is usual, indentation, empty lines, and lines whose first printable character is the
hash character, are all ignored. The general line format is
action user-exp [net-exp ...]
Each active line must contain at least two fields: an action and a user-exp.
The first field, action, must be either of allow and deny. Any other value will lead to
the line being ignored, but reported in the system log. Of course, the two values represent
admitting and rejecting interpretations for the resulting rule.
The second field, user-exp, is a POSIX regular expression crafted to match user names.
Remember that the regular expression would need anchors in order to test not only substrings.
It is important to note that in a site-wide ACL, the file selected by the switch -a, the
expression user-exp is matched against the requested local user name, that of the callee.
While checking the callees private ACL-file .talkrc, the matching of user-exp is done
against the remote callers name. Any other interpretation is plainly futile.
Each line may be augmented by a net list, containing one or more expressions net-exp.
Each of these is either the simple word any, a numeric IPv4 address, or a full IPv4 address
with an appended netmask. The effect is to restrict the applicability of the rule to the
specified address range, or to set an explicit wildcard match any. The absence of a net list
is equivalent to specifying a single any. The netmask can be specified as a CIDR mask
length, or as an explicit address mask.
The actual evaluation is made separately for the site-wide ACL, and for the requested
local user ACL, contained in the callees private file .talkrc. This latter file must be a

Chapter 24: talkd: a server for communication between users

68

regular file and must be owned by the very same user, have his primary group ownership,
and not be group or world writeable. Should any of these prerequisites be violated, the
users ACL is replaced by a single deny-all rule.
All rules in each set are evaluated, in the sense that whenever an expression net-exp
matches the incoming IPv4 address, then the regular expression user-exp is tested for a
match. That being the case, the corresponding action is recorded. The last match in each
set determines the outcome in its category.
In the most common case, a system wide deny is overridden if the local user has
specified at least one valid and applicable rule, admitting access. In the contrary case,
where no admitting user rule could be established at all, then a resulting deny, from a
system wide ACL, will be used as the final action.
In strict policy mode, a site-wide deny is always final, ignoring any users desire. The
administrator must explicitly arrange some admitting rule, with an action allow, and
some suitable net list. Still, the individual user can arrange his private file for an even
narrower selection of friends.

Chapter 25: telnetd: Telnet server

69

25 telnetd: Telnet server

telnetd [option]...
-a authmode
--authmode=authmode
Specify what mode to use for authentication. Allowed values are: none,
other, user, valid, and off.
-D[list]
--debug=[list]
Set the debugging level. The argument is a comma separated list of these
categories: options, report, netdata, ptydata, auth, and encr. All
these may be used in the form name[=level]. Omission of level implies
the maximal possible debugging level for that particular category.
There is one additional category tcp, which does not take an additional level
indicator, but is instead equivalent to setting the socket option SO_DEBUG for
debugging the complete traffic.
The output is written to the file /tmp/telnet.debug, and any new data is
incrementally added as time passes.
-E string
--exec-login=string
Set program to be executed instead of /bin/login.
-h
--no-hostinfo
Do not print host information before login has been completed.
-l[mode]
--linemode=[mode]
Set line mode. An empty argument will force line read mode at all times. The
only recognised value is otherwise nokludge.
-n
--no-keepalive
Disable TCP keep-alives.
-S principal
--server-principal=principal
Set principal name for the server, to be used in Kerberos authentication. The
value principal can be set to provide full specification like srv.local@REALM
and tnt/localhost@REALM, where the first uses the standard prefix host/.
Or principal can override default settings in part only, like srv.local,
tnt/srv.local, or @REALM.
-U
--reverse-lookup
Refuse connections from addresses that cannot be mapped back into a symbolic
name. A client is accepted only if the IP address can be resolved as a host name,
and the same name is resolvable to addresses among which the clientss address
is included.

Chapter 25: telnetd: Telnet server

70

-X authtype
--disable-auth-type=authtype
Disable the use of the given authentication type. Use this option multiple
times if more than one type is to be disabled. Standard choices are null,
kerberos_v4, and kerberos_v5.

25.1 Crafting an execution string.

The server telnetd contains a built-in execution string which invokes login with arguments
suitable for the operating system at hand. This preset choice corresponds to the standard
use case of the service. For specialized purposes this implementation also offers a command
line option -E, or --exec-login, to override the built-in execution of login, thus allowing
almost any choice of handler.
A custom execution string could look like
telnetd -h -E /usr/local/sbin/avrop

%t %U

The execution string must as its first part provide an absolute path to an executable file.
After that may follow arbitrary additional arguments. For this latter part, telnetd offers some replacement tokens that dynamically are replaced by content. All are of the
form %<var>, where <var> is a single letter from the following collection of selectors. A
valid letter is called variable. The mark conditional, appearing below, indicates that the
corresponding variable is conditionally assigned a value.
%a

Returns ok whenever authentication is complete. conditional

%d

Produces a time and date string.

%h

Gives the remote host name in canonical form.

%l

States the local host name, also in canonical form.

%L

Returns the path of the pseudo terminal assigned to the client.

%t

Gives the terminal device stripped of the leading /dev/.

%T

States the terminal type, like xterm. conditional

%u

Provides the authenticated user name. conditional

%U

Returns the user name passed as an environment variable USER by the remote
client software. The value is empty, should the environment not provide a value.

In addition, a conditional construct is able to take one action in case a variable has an
assigned value, and optionally to take another action in the opposite case. The contruct is
%?<var>{true-stmt}[{false-stmt}]
The braces are here mandatory, while the brackets enclose the optional else-clause and are
not included in actual use. The initial, motivating example, could thus be expanded to read
telnetd -h -E /usr/local/sbin/avrop

%t %?a{%u krb5}{%U}

In case authentication was completed as user sigge, the execution string would resolve to
/usr/local/sbin/avrop

pts/1 sigge krb5

In all other cases the result would be

Chapter 25: telnetd: Telnet server

71

/usr/local/sbin/avrop pts/1 $USER

where $USER is the value of the corresponding environment variable and could possibly be
empty.

Chapter 26: tftpd: TFTP server

72

26 tftpd: TFTP server

tftpd is intended to be invoked via inetd at all times.
Synopsis:
tftpd [options] [directory ...]
-g group
--group=group
Specify group membership of the process owner. This is used only along with
the option -s, and replaces the group membership that comes from the process
owner himself.
-l
--logging
Enable logging.
-n
--nonexistent
Supress negative acknowledgement of requests for nonexistent relative
filenames.
-s dir
--secure-dir=dir
Let the serving process change its root directory to dir before attending to any
requests. This directory is not observable by any client, but improves server
isolation, since servable contents must be located below this chrooted directory
dir.
-u user
--user=user
Specify the process owner for serving requests. Only relevant along with the
option -s. The default name is nobody.

26.1 Directory prefixes

In addition to options, an invocation of tftpd can specify an optional list of directory
prefixes. These are approved of according to two principles:
Relative pathnames are ignored.
At most twenty prefixes are approved, the rest is discarded.
A request for a file is decided upon as a consequence of evaluating these criteria:
Every file request containing the substring /../ is denied, as is a file name beginning
with ../.
Write requests must specify absolute locations.
A file request, if specified as an absolute pathname, must begin with one of the approved
directory prefixes, should at least one such prefix have been accepted.
In the absence of a prefix collection, any absolute pathname is accepted, should the
corresponding file exist.

Chapter 26: tftpd: TFTP server

73

A file request, if specified as a relative name, will only be searched for below the
acceptable prefixes, should at least one such prefix have been approved.
A request for a relatively named file, is denied in the absence of approved directory
prefixes.
The resulting file must be world readable, or world writable, for a read request, or a
write request, to succeed.

26.2 Use cases

The standard use case is an entry in /etc/inetd.conf like
tftp dgram udp4 wait root /usr/sbin/tftpd \
tftpd /tftpboot /altboot
This would allow the TFTP client to use any of
get kernel
get /tftpboot/kernel
get kernel.alt
get /altboot/kernel.alt
get /etc/motd
given that /tftpboot/kernel and /altboot/kernel.alt exist. Observe that also
/etc/motd is accessible, inspite there being no explicit mention of standard file locations.
A stronger mode of running a TFTP server is to use the secure mode, meaning that
the serving process is running in a chrooted mode. Then a suitable configuration could be
tftp dgram udp4 wait root /usr/sbin/tftpd \
tftpd --secure-dir=/srv/tftp-root /tftpboot /altboot
Supposing the files kernel and kernel.alt to exist in the common directory
/srv/tftp-root/altboot/, all the previously suggested client requests for a kernel would
still be granted, but now any request for /etc/motd would be declined, and would get a
reply File not found back.
The chrooted setting is denying access outside of /srv/tftp-root, yet is not indicating
this lock-in to the client, and is thus improving server isolation. Since neither of -u and -g
were specified, the configuration reproduced above will in fact have the transmitting server
process running with the default owner set to nobody:nogroup.

Chapter 27: uucpd: Unix to Unix Copy relay daemon.

74

27 uucpd: Unix to Unix Copy relay daemon.

uucpd is a relay daemon responsible for accepting TCP transported connections for uucico.
It is started by inetd, conducts any authentication, and then hands acceptable requests
over to uucico.
uucpd [option]...

27.1 Options
There is a single, specific option available:
-u location
--uucico=location
Replace the hard coded location of uucico with the value specified as location.

27.2 Authentication steps.

Invocation is expected to be conducted by a protocol described exchange of user name and
password; unfortunately in clear text. If those agree with existing local entries, then uucpd
verifies that the stated user also has user shell location identical to the full file system
location of uucico. Should that not be the case, the request is declined.
For this latter check, the option --uucico is useful when setting the configuration for
inetd. It is recommended to wrap the invocation line of uucpd within a call to tcpd in the
standard fashion.

Appendix A: GNU Free Documentation License

75

Appendix A GNU Free Documentation License

Version 1.3, 3 November 2008
c
Copyright 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
http://fsf.org/
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
0. PREAMBLE
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and
useful document free in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom
to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way
to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications
made by others.
This License is a kind of copyleft, which means that derivative works of the document
must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public
License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software.
We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because
free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with manuals
providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this License is not limited to
software manuals; it can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or
whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for
works whose purpose is instruction or reference.
1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS
This License applies to any manual or other work, in any medium, that contains a
notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms
of this License. Such a notice grants a world-wide, royalty-free license, unlimited in
duration, to use that work under the conditions stated herein. The Document,
below, refers to any such manual or work. Any member of the public is a licensee, and
is addressed as you. You accept the license if you copy, modify or distribute the work
in a way requiring permission under copyright law.
A Modified Version of the Document means any work containing the Document or
a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or translated into
another language.
A Secondary Section is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document
that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document
to the Documents overall subject (or to related matters) and contains nothing that
could fall directly within that overall subject. (Thus, if the Document is in part a
textbook of mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics.) The
relationship could be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related
matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding
them.
The Invariant Sections are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated, as
being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice that says that the Document is released

Appendix A: GNU Free Documentation License

76

under this License. If a section does not fit the above definition of Secondary then it is
not allowed to be designated as Invariant. The Document may contain zero Invariant
Sections. If the Document does not identify any Invariant Sections then there are none.
The Cover Texts are certain short passages of text that are listed, as Front-Cover
Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that the Document is released under
this License. A Front-Cover Text may be at most 5 words, and a Back-Cover Text may
be at most 25 words.
A Transparent copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy, represented
in a format whose specification is available to the general public, that is suitable for
revising the document straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available drawing
editor, and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to
a variety of formats suitable for input to text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise
Transparent file format whose markup, or absence of markup, has been arranged to
thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent. An image
format is not Transparent if used for any substantial amount of text. A copy that is
not Transparent is called Opaque.
Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII without
markup, Texinfo input format, LaTEX input format, SGML or XML using a publicly
available DTD, and standard-conforming simple HTML, PostScript or PDF designed
for human modification. Examples of transparent image formats include PNG, XCF
and JPG. Opaque formats include proprietary formats that can be read and edited
only by proprietary word processors, SGML or XML for which the DTD and/or processing tools are not generally available, and the machine-generated HTML, PostScript
or PDF produced by some word processors for output purposes only.
The Title Page means, for a printed book, the title page itself, plus such following
pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the material this License requires to appear in the
title page. For works in formats which do not have any title page as such, Title Page
means the text near the most prominent appearance of the works title, preceding the
beginning of the body of the text.
The publisher means any person or entity that distributes copies of the Document
to the public.
A section Entitled XYZ means a named subunit of the Document whose title either
is precisely XYZ or contains XYZ in parentheses following text that translates XYZ in
another language. (Here XYZ stands for a specific section name mentioned below, such
as Acknowledgements, Dedications, Endorsements, or History.) To Preserve
the Title of such a section when you modify the Document means that it remains a
section Entitled XYZ according to this definition.
The Document may include Warranty Disclaimers next to the notice which states that
this License applies to the Document. These Warranty Disclaimers are considered to
be included by reference in this License, but only as regards disclaiming warranties:
any other implication that these Warranty Disclaimers may have is void and has no
effect on the meaning of this License.
2. VERBATIM COPYING

Appendix A: GNU Free Documentation License

77

You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or
noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license
notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and
that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License. You may not use
technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies
you make or distribute. However, you may accept compensation in exchange for copies.
If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions
in section 3.
You may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated above, and you may publicly
display copies.
3. COPYING IN QUANTITY
If you publish printed copies (or copies in media that commonly have printed covers) of
the Document, numbering more than 100, and the Documents license notice requires
Cover Texts, you must enclose the copies in covers that carry, clearly and legibly, all
these Cover Texts: Front-Cover Texts on the front cover, and Back-Cover Texts on
the back cover. Both covers must also clearly and legibly identify you as the publisher
of these copies. The front cover must present the full title with all words of the title
equally prominent and visible. You may add other material on the covers in addition.
Copying with changes limited to the covers, as long as they preserve the title of the
Document and satisfy these conditions, can be treated as verbatim copying in other
respects.
If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legibly, you should put
the first ones listed (as many as fit reasonably) on the actual cover, and continue the
rest onto adjacent pages.
If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100,
you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque
copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy a computer-network location from which
the general network-using public has access to download using public-standard network
protocols a complete Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material. If
you use the latter option, you must take reasonably prudent steps, when you begin
distribution of Opaque copies in quantity, to ensure that this Transparent copy will
remain thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time
you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that
edition to the public.
It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the Document well
before redistributing any large number of copies, to give them a chance to provide you
with an updated version of the Document.
4. MODIFICATIONS
You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions
of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely
this License, with the Modified Version filling the role of the Document, thus licensing
distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of
it. In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:
A. Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from that of the
Document, and from those of previous versions (which should, if there were any,

Appendix A: GNU Free Documentation License

78

be listed in the History section of the Document). You may use the same title as
a previous version if the original publisher of that version gives permission.
B. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities responsible for
authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version, together with at least five
of the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has fewer
than five), unless they release you from this requirement.
C. State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the Modified Version, as the
publisher.
D. Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document.
E. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent to the other
copyright notices.
F. Include, immediately after the copyright notices, a license notice giving the public
permission to use the Modified Version under the terms of this License, in the form
shown in the Addendum below.
G. Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant Sections and required Cover
Texts given in the Documents license notice.
H. Include an unaltered copy of this License.
I. Preserve the section Entitled History, Preserve its Title, and add to it an item
stating at least the title, year, new authors, and publisher of the Modified Version
as given on the Title Page. If there is no section Entitled History in the Document, create one stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document
as given on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as
stated in the previous sentence.
J. Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for public access to
a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise the network locations given in
the Document for previous versions it was based on. These may be placed in the
History section. You may omit a network location for a work that was published
at least four years before the Document itself, or if the original publisher of the
version it refers to gives permission.
K. For any section Entitled Acknowledgements or Dedications, Preserve the Title
of the section, and preserve in the section all the substance and tone of each of the
contributor acknowledgements and/or dedications given therein.
L. Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document, unaltered in their text and
in their titles. Section numbers or the equivalent are not considered part of the
section titles.
M. Delete any section Entitled Endorsements. Such a section may not be included
in the Modified Version.
N. Do not retitle any existing section to be Entitled Endorsements or to conflict in
title with any Invariant Section.
O. Preserve any Warranty Disclaimers.
If the Modified Version includes new front-matter sections or appendices that qualify
as Secondary Sections and contain no material copied from the Document, you may at
your option designate some or all of these sections as invariant. To do this, add their

Appendix A: GNU Free Documentation License

79

titles to the list of Invariant Sections in the Modified Versions license notice. These
titles must be distinct from any other section titles.
You may add a section Entitled Endorsements, provided it contains nothing but
endorsements of your Modified Version by various partiesfor example, statements of
peer review or that the text has been approved by an organization as the authoritative
definition of a standard.
You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a passage of up
to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list of Cover Texts in the Modified
Version. Only one passage of Front-Cover Text and one of Back-Cover Text may be
added by (or through arrangements made by) any one entity. If the Document already
includes a cover text for the same cover, previously added by you or by arrangement
made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of, you may not add another; but
you may replace the old one, on explicit permission from the previous publisher that
added the old one.
The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give permission
to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified
Version.
5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS
You may combine the Document with other documents released under this License,
under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions, provided that you
include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections of all of the original documents,
unmodified, and list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license
notice, and that you preserve all their Warranty Disclaimers.
The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple identical
Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy. If there are multiple Invariant
Sections with the same name but different contents, make the title of each such section
unique by adding at the end of it, in parentheses, the name of the original author or
publisher of that section if known, or else a unique number. Make the same adjustment
to the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined
work.
In the combination, you must combine any sections Entitled History in the various original documents, forming one section Entitled History; likewise combine any
sections Entitled Acknowledgements, and any sections Entitled Dedications. You
must delete all sections Entitled Endorsements.
6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS
You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents released
under this License, and replace the individual copies of this License in the various
documents with a single copy that is included in the collection, provided that you
follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents in all
other respects.
You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it individually under this License, provided you insert a copy of this License into the extracted
document, and follow this License in all other respects regarding verbatim copying of
that document.

Appendix A: GNU Free Documentation License

80

7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS

A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent
documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called
an aggregate if the copyright resulting from the compilation is not used to limit the
legal rights of the compilations users beyond what the individual works permit. When
the Document is included in an aggregate, this License does not apply to the other
works in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document.
If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the Document,
then if the Document is less than one half of the entire aggregate, the Documents Cover
Texts may be placed on covers that bracket the Document within the aggregate, or the
electronic equivalent of covers if the Document is in electronic form. Otherwise they
must appear on printed covers that bracket the whole aggregate.
8. TRANSLATION
Translation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute translations
of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing Invariant Sections with
translations requires special permission from their copyright holders, but you may
include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in addition to the original versions
of these Invariant Sections. You may include a translation of this License, and all the
license notices in the Document, and any Warranty Disclaimers, provided that you
also include the original English version of this License and the original versions of
those notices and disclaimers. In case of a disagreement between the translation and
the original version of this License or a notice or disclaimer, the original version will
prevail.
If a section in the Document is Entitled Acknowledgements, Dedications, or History, the requirement (section 4) to Preserve its Title (section 1) will typically require
changing the actual title.
9. TERMINATION
You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as expressly
provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense, or
distribute it is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.
However, if you cease all violation of this License, then your license from a particular
copyright holder is reinstated (a) provisionally, unless and until the copyright holder
explicitly and finally terminates your license, and (b) permanently, if the copyright
holder fails to notify you of the violation by some reasonable means prior to 60 days
after the cessation.
Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated permanently if
the copyright holder notifies you of the violation by some reasonable means, this is the
first time you have received notice of violation of this License (for any work) from that
copyright holder, and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the
notice.
Termination of your rights under this section does not terminate the licenses of parties
who have received copies or rights from you under this License. If your rights have
been terminated and not permanently reinstated, receipt of a copy of some or all of the
same material does not give you any rights to use it.

Appendix A: GNU Free Documentation License

81

10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE

The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free
Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit
to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.
See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/.
Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document
specifies that a particular numbered version of this License or any later version
applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that
specified version or of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by
the Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version number of
this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free
Software Foundation. If the Document specifies that a proxy can decide which future
versions of this License can be used, that proxys public statement of acceptance of a
version permanently authorizes you to choose that version for the Document.
11. RELICENSING
Massive Multiauthor Collaboration Site (or MMC Site) means any World Wide
Web server that publishes copyrightable works and also provides prominent facilities
for anybody to edit those works. A public wiki that anybody can edit is an example of
such a server. A Massive Multiauthor Collaboration (or MMC) contained in the
site means any set of copyrightable works thus published on the MMC site.
CC-BY-SA means the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license published by Creative Commons Corporation, a not-for-profit corporation with a principal
place of business in San Francisco, California, as well as future copyleft versions of that
license published by that same organization.
Incorporate means to publish or republish a Document, in whole or in part, as part
of another Document.
An MMC is eligible for relicensing if it is licensed under this License, and if all works
that were first published under this License somewhere other than this MMC, and
subsequently incorporated in whole or in part into the MMC, (1) had no cover texts
or invariant sections, and (2) were thus incorporated prior to November 1, 2008.
The operator of an MMC Site may republish an MMC contained in the site under
CC-BY-SA on the same site at any time before August 1, 2009, provided the MMC is
eligible for relicensing.

Appendix A: GNU Free Documentation License

82

ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents

To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of the License in the
document and put the following copyright and license notices just after the title page:
Copyright (C) year your name.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover
Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU
Free Documentation License.

If you have Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts and Back-Cover Texts, replace the
with. . . Texts. line with this:
with the Invariant Sections being list their titles, with
the Front-Cover Texts being list, and with the Back-Cover Texts
being list.

If you have Invariant Sections without Cover Texts, or some other combination of the
three, merge those two alternatives to suit the situation.
If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code, we recommend releasing
these examples in parallel under your choice of free software license, such as the GNU
General Public License, to permit their use in free software.

Index

83

Index
%
%a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
%d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
%h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
%l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
%L . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
%t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
%T . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
%u . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
%U . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

70
70
70
70
70
70
70
70
70

-- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
--8-bit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
--acl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
--active . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
--address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
--aliases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
--allow-root . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
--anonymous-only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
--auth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
--authmode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
--binary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
--binary-output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
--bind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
--count. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 11
--d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
--daemon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53, 60
--debug . . . . 7, 11, 17, 32, 35, 38, 42, 48, 53, 66, 69
--disable-auth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
--disable-auth-type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
--domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
--echo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
--encrypt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29, 33, 36, 39, 61
--environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
--error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
--escape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32, 38
--exec-login . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
--file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 5
--first-hop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
--flood. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 11
--fqdn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
--from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
--gateways. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
--group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
--help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
--hop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
--hoplimit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
--host . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5, 6, 31
--icmp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
--id . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
--idle-timeout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
--ignore-routing-log. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 12

--inet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
--interval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 11
--ip-addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
--ip-timestamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
--ipany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31, 49
--ipv4 . . . . . . . . . 5, 17, 29, 31, 32, 35, 38, 49, 53, 60
--ipv6 . . . . . . . . . 5, 17, 29, 31, 32, 35, 38, 49, 53, 60
--kerberos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29, 33, 36, 61, 64
--linemode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
--linger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
--local-domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
--local-time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
--log-sessions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
--logging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53, 58, 66, 72
--login . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
--long . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
--mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
--mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
--max-hop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
--max-timeout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
--netrc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
--nis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
--no-detach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
--no-edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
--no-escape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32, 38
--no-forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
--no-glob . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
--no-hostinfo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
--no-input. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
--no-keepalive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60, 64, 69
--no-klog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
--no-login . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 38
--no-prompt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
--no-rc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
--no-rhosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60, 64
--no-unixaf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
--no-version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
--noerr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
--non-rfc2577 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
--nonexistent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
--numeric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 12
--passive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
--password. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
--pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 12
--pidfile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42, 48, 53
--port . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13, 31, 61
--preload . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 11
--preserve. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
--priority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
--prompt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
--quiet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 12
--r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
--rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
--rcdir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
--rcfile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Index

--realm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29, 33, 36, 38

--recursive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
--request-ttl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
--resolve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
--resolve-hostnames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
--reverse-lookup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
--reverse-required . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61, 64
--rlogin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
--route . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
--secure-dir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
--server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
--server-principal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61, 69
--servername . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
--short . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
--size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 12
--socket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
--source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
--stderr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
--strict-policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
--tag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
--target-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
--timeout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 12, 54, 66
--timestamp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
--to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
--tos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 12, 13
--trace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 38
--tries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
--ttl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 12
--type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 13
--umask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
--usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
--user . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31, 32, 35, 38, 72
--uucico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
--vacuous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
--verbose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 12, 16, 18
--verify-hostname . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60, 64
--version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
--wait . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
--yp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
-4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5, 17, 29, 31, 32, 35, 38, 49, 53, 60
-6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5, 17, 29, 31, 32, 35, 38, 49, 53, 60
-8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32, 38
-a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 15, 31, 38, 53, 60, 64, 66, 69
-A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17, 53
-b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
-c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 11, 38
-d . . . . . . . 4, 7, 11, 17, 29, 32, 35, 38, 42, 48, 53, 60
-D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48, 53, 60, 69
-debug . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
-e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17, 31, 32, 38
-E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32, 38, 69
-f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 5, 8, 11, 13, 29, 48
-F . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 15
-g . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13, 15, 17, 72
-h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5, 6, 15, 31, 49, 69
-H . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
-i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 5, 7, 11, 15, 17, 66
-I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

84

-k . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29, 33, 36, 38, 61, 64

-K . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29, 33, 36, 38
-l . . 8, 11, 15, 32, 35, 38, 49, 53, 58, 60, 64, 69, 72
-L . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15, 38, 60, 64
-m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13, 15, 49
-M . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13, 15
-n . . . . . . . . . . 8, 12, 18, 31, 35, 38, 48, 60, 64, 69, 72
-N . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
-o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
-p . . . . . . . 5, 9, 12, 13, 15, 18, 29, 31, 42, 48, 53, 61
-P . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31, 48
-q . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 12, 13, 15, 53
-r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 12, 15, 29, 39, 48, 61, 64, 66
-R . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 15
-s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 6, 9, 12, 15, 49, 72
-S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 15, 61, 64, 66, 69
-t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 7, 13, 16, 18, 29, 54, 66
-T . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 12, 16, 49, 54
-u . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31, 54, 72, 74
-U . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
-v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 12, 18, 64
-V . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
-w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 12, 14
-W . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
-x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16, 29, 33, 36, 39, 61
-X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39, 70
-y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

.
.netrc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

B
bug, reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

C
common options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

D
dnsdomainname . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

F
ftp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
ftpd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

H
help, online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
hostname . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

I
inetd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Index

85

logger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

syslogd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

O
option delimiter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

P
ping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
ping6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

37
66
38
69
40
72
13

R
rcp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
rexec . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
rexecd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
rlogin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
rlogind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
rsh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
rshd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

talk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
talkd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
telnet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
telnetd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tftp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tftpd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
traceroute. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

29
31
58
32
60
35
63

usage, online. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
uucpd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

V
version number, finding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

W
whois . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15