Updated ChangeLog.

[doldaconnect.git] / doc / man / doldacond.8

.\"
.\" Copyright (C) 2007 Fredrik Tolf <fredrik@dolda2000.com>
.\"
.\" This is free documentation; you can redistribute it and/or
.\" modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
.\" published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
.\" the License, or (at your option) any later version.
.\"
.\" The GNU General Public License's references to "object code"
.\" and "executables" are to be interpreted as the output of any
.\" document formatting or typesetting system, including
.\" intermediate and printed output.
.\"
.\" This manual is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
.\" but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
.\" MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
.\" GNU General Public License for more details.
.\"
.\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
.\" License along with this manual; if not, write to the Free
.\" Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111,
.\" USA.
.\"
.TH DOLDACOND 8 "2008-02-14" "" "Dolda Connect manual"
.SH NAME
doldacond \- Dolda Connect daemon
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B doldacond
[ \fB-hnsV\fP ] [ \fB-C\fP \fIconfigfile\fP ]
[ \fB-p\fP \fIpidfile\fP ] [ \fB-f\fP \fIfacility\fP ]
.SH DESCRIPTION
The \fBdoldacond\fP program is the primary part of the collection of
software that makes up Dolda Connect. It runs in the background and
carries out all the actual work of filesharing. Other programs, such
as \fBdolcon\fP(1), connect to \fBdoldacond\fP over a socket in order
to command it and/or display its status to a user.
.P
The configuration of \fBdoldacond\fP is controlled via the
\fBdoldacond.conf\fP(5) file, which is described in detail in its own
manual page.
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.B -h
Displays a brief usage message on stdout and exits.
.TP
.B -s
Normally, \fBdoldacond\fP will print log messages to stderr before it
has daemonized, and switch to syslog output after daemonization. With
the -s option, however, it will log to syslog directly, and never to
stderr. It is probably only useful when starting \fBdoldacond\fP from
an init script.
.TP
.B -n
Causes \fBdoldacond\fP to not daemonize. As a side-effect of avoiding
daemonization, log messages will be printed to stderr rather than to
syslog even after the point where the daemon would normally have
daemonized (unless the -s option is also specified).
.TP
.B -V
Displays version and build information on stdout and exits.
.TP
.BI -C " configfile"
Use \fIconfigfile\fP instead of the normal search list for
configuration files. See \fBdoldacond.conf\fP(5) for the normal
behavior.
.TP
.BI -p " pidfile"
Write the daemon's PID to \fIpidfile\fP after daemonization. Works
even if the -n option has been specified.
.TP
.BI -f " facility"
Use \fIfacility\fP when logging to syslog. The facility can be any of
\fBauth\fP, \fBauthpriv\fP, \fBcron\fP, \fBdaemon\fP, \fBftp\fP,
\fBkern\fP, \fBlpr\fP, \fBmail\fP, \fBnews\fP, \fBsyslog\fP,
\fBuser\fP, \fBuucp\fP or \fBlocal0\fP...\fB7\fP, although only a
subset probably make sense for \fBdoldacond\fP. The default is
\fBdaemon\fP. Also see the BUGS section.
.SH FILES
The configuration file will normally be called
/usr/local/etc/doldacond.conf, /etc/doldacond.conf or
~/.doldacond.conf, but a multitude of others are possible. See the
\fBdoldacond.conf\fP(5) manual page for details.
.SH SIGNALS
.TP
.B SIGHUP
Causes the daemon to reread its configuration file and update its
operation accordingly, and to rescan all shared directories. SIGHUP
can safely be sent at any time \- no connected clients or hubs will be
affected.
.TP
.B SIGINT, SIGTERM
Shut down the daemon cleanly, unlinking temporary files and sockets.
.TP
.B SIGUSR1, SIGUSR2
Used for debugging. USR1 will cause the daemon to fork and dump a core
file, and USR2 will dump some memory usage information to /tmp.
.SH SECURITY
Dolda Connect, including \fBdoldacond\fP and its assorted clients, are
capable of a number of different authentication methods. The default
configuration will cause the daemon to only listen for client
connections on a Unix socket, over which authentication will be made
using Unix credentials passing.
.P
When running clients over a network, authentication can be done using
either PAM, Kerberos 5 (requires the MIT libraries) or client trust
(no authentication). Unix credentials passing and Kerberos
authentication should be perfectly secure. PAM authentication should
be secure in itself, but the client protocol is not encrypted, and
therefore causes passwords to be sent over the network in the
clear. Authentication-less operation is, obviously, not secure at all
and is disabled by default. It may be useful on a trusted network,
however.
.SH BUGS
\fBdoldacond\fP has proved to be surprisingly stable. I have had it
running for far longer than a month without any sign of instability or
memory leaks, which is probably a lot longer than a program of this
kind really needs to be able to stay running.
.P
That said, it is not without bugs. Here follows a list of the more
prominent ones.
.P
Most importantly, \fBdoldacond\fP will fail miserably at sharing files
from filesystems that do not have persistent i-numbers, since hashes
are indexed by the i-number of the file. This is done so because
indexing by i-numbers rather than file names allows the daemon to not
rehash files that have merely been renamed. However, among the
filesystems that do not have persistent i-numbers is the Linux
implementation of FAT, which means that it is impossible to share
files that are shared with Microsoft Windows. All the standard Unix
filesystems, including at least ufs, ext2/3, reiserfs, xfs or any of
them shared over nfs are known to be safe.
.P
From time to time, the hash controller can get stuck, and stop
processing more files. The obvious work-around is to restart
\fBdoldacond\fP, at which point it will continue where it left off. If
you feel adventurous and/or really need to not restart it, you can
attach \fBgdb\fP(1) (or your debugger of choice) to the running
\fBdoldacond\fP process and set the hashjob variable to -1, which will
force \fBdoldacond\fP to resume hashing. Don't do that while a hash
job is actually running, though.
.SH AUTHOR
Fredrik Tolf <fredrik@dolda2000.com>
.SH SEE ALSO
\fBdoldacond.conf\fP(5), \fBdolcon\fP(1)