2 .\" Copyright (C) 2007 Fredrik Tolf (fredrik@dolda2000.com)
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24 .TH DOLDACOND 8 "2007-04-11" "" "Dolda Connect manual"
26 doldacond \- Dolda Connect daemon
29 [ \fB-hns\fP ] [ \fB-C\fP \fIconfigfile\fP ]
30 [ \fB-p\fP \fIpidfile\fP ] [ \fB-f\fP -fIfacility\fP ]
32 The \fBdoldacond\fP program is the primary part of the collection of
33 software that makes up Dolda Connect. It runs in the background and
34 carries out all the actual work of filesharing. Other programs connect
35 to \fBdoldacond\fP over a socket in order to command it and/or display
38 The configuration of \fBdoldacond\fP is controlled via the
39 \fBdoldacond.conf\fP(5) file, which is described in detail in its own
44 Displays a brief usage message on stdout and exits.
47 Normally, \fBdoldacond\fP will print log messages to stderr before it
48 has daemonized, and switch to syslog output after daemonization. With
49 the -s option, however, it will log to syslog directly, and never to
50 stderr. It is probably only useful when starting \fBdoldacond\fP from
54 Causes \fBdoldacond\fP to not daemonize. As a side-effect of avoiding
55 daemonization, log messages will be printed to stderr rather than to
56 syslog even after the point where the daemon would normally have
57 daemonized (unless the -s option is also specified).
60 Use \fIconfigfile\fP instead of the normal search list for
61 configuration files. See \fBdoldacond.conf\fP(5) for the normal
65 Write the daemon's PID to \fIpidfile\fP after daemonization. Works
66 even if the -n option has been specified.
69 Use \fIfacility\fP when logging to syslog. The facility can be any of
70 \fBauth\fP, \fBauthpriv\fP, \fBcron\fP, \fBdaemon\fP, \fBftp\fP,
71 \fBkern\fP, \fBlpr\fP, \fBmail\fP, \fBnews\fP, \fBsyslog\fP,
72 \fBuser\fP, \fBuucp\fP or \fBlocal0\fP...\fB7\fP, although only a
73 subset probably make sense for \fBdoldacond\fP. The default is
74 \fBdaemon\fP. Also see the BUGS section.
76 The configuration file will normally be called
77 /usr/local/etc/doldacond.conf, /etc/doldacond.conf or
78 ~/.doldacond.conf, but a multitude of others are possible. See the
79 \fBdoldacond.conf\fP(5) manual page for details.
83 Causes the daemon to reread its configuration file and update its
84 operation accordingly, and to rescan all shared directories. SIGHUP
85 can safely be sent at any time \- no connected clients or hubs will be
89 Shut down the daemon cleanly, unlinking temporary files and sockets.
92 Used for debugging. USR1 will cause the daemon to fork and dump a core
93 file, and USR2 will dump some memory usage information to /tmp.
95 Dolda Connect, including \fBdoldacond\fP and its assorted clients, are
96 capable of a number of different authentication methods. The default
97 configuration will cause the daemon to only listen for client
98 connections on a Unix socket, over which authentication will be made
99 using Unix credentials passing. When running clients over a network,
100 authentication can be done using either PAM, Kerberos 5 (requires the
101 MIT libraries) or client trust (no authentication). Unix credentials
102 passing and Kerberos authentication should be perfectly secure. PAM
103 authentication should be secure in itself, but the client protocol is
104 not encrypted, and therefore causes passwords to be sent over the
105 network in the clear. Authentication-less operation is, obviously, not
106 secure at all and is disabled by default. It may be useful on a
107 trusted network, however.
109 \fBdoldacond\fP has proved to be surprisingly stable. I have had it
110 running for far longer than a month without any sign of instability or
111 memory leaks, which is probably a lot longer than a program of this
112 kind really needs to be able to stay running.
114 That said, it is not without bugs. Here follows a list of the more
117 Most importantly, \fBdoldacond\fP will fail miserably at sharing files
118 from filesystems that do not have persistent i-numbers, since hashes
119 are indexed by the i-number of the file. This is done so because
120 indexing by i-numbers rather than file names allows the daemon to not
121 rehash files that have merely been renamed. However, among the
122 filesystems that do not have persistent i-numbers is the Linux
123 implementation of FAT, which means that it is impossible to share
124 files that are shared with Microsoft Windows. All the known standard
125 Unix filesystems, including at least ufs, ext2/3, reiserfs, xfs or any
126 of them shared over nfs are known to be safe.
128 From time to time, the hash controller can get stuck, and stop
129 processing more files. The obvious work-around is to restart
130 \fBdoldacond\fP, at which point it will continue where it left off. If
131 you feel adventurous and/or really need to not restart it, you can
132 attach \fBgdb\fP(1) (or your debugger of choice) to the running
133 \fBdoldacond\fP process and set the hashjob variable to -1, which will
134 force \fBdoldacond\fP to resume hashing. Don't do that while a hash
135 job is actually running, though.
137 Not really a bug in \fBdoldacond\fP itself, many PAM modules will
138 reinitialize the syslog library and cause log messages from the daemon
139 itself to arrive to a different facility than originally intended.
141 Fredrik Tolf <fredrik@dolda2000.com>
143 \fBdoldacond.conf\fP(5)