Content-type: text/html Man page of pcnfsd

pcnfsd

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NAME

pcnfsd, rpc.pcnfsd - The (PC)NFS authentication and print request server  

SYNOPSIS

/usr/sbin/pcnfsd  

DESCRIPTION

The pcnfsd daemon is an RPC server that supports ONC clients on PC (DOS, OS/2, Macintosh, and other) systems. This reference page describes Version 2 of the pcnfsd server.

The rpc.pcnfsd daemon is started via /etc/rc.config by default. It can be turned off by running nfssetup and by answering 'no' to the appropriate question. The pcnfsd daemon reads the /etc/pcnfsd.conf configuration file if present, and then services RPC requests directed to program number 150001. This release of the pcnfsd daemon supports both Version 1 and Version 2 of the pcnfsd protocol.

The requests serviced by pcnfsd fall into three categories: authentication, printing, and other. Only the authentication and printing services have administrative significance.  

AVAILABILITY

This program can be redistributed freely.  

AUTHENTICATION

When pcnfsd receives a PCNFSD_AUTH or PCNFSD2_AUTH request, it "logs in" the user by validating the user name and password and returning the corresponding UID, GIDs, home directory, and umask.

By default, pcnfsd only allows authentication requests for users with UIDs in the range 101 to 60002. (This corresponds in SVR4 to the range for non-system accounts.) To override this, you can add a line in the following format to the /etc/pcnfsd.conf file. Here each range is either of the following forms indicating an inclusive range: uidrange uid

uidrange uid-uid  

PRINTING

The pcnfsd daemon supports a printing model based on the use of NFS to transfer the actual print data from the client to the server. The client system issues a PCNFSD_PR_INIT or PCNFSD2_PR_INIT request, and the server returns the path to a spool directory that the client can use and that is exported by NFS. The pcnfsd daemon creates a subdirectory for each of its clients: the parent directory is normally /usr/spool/pcnfs and the subdirectory is the host name of the client system. You must also export the /usr/spool/pcnfs directory to the PC clients. If you want to use a different parent directory, add a line of the following format to the /etc/pcnfsd.conf file:

spooldir path

Once a client has mounted the spool directory by using NFS and has transferred print data to a file in this directory, the client issues a PCNFSD_PR_START or PCNFSD2_PR_START request. The pcnfsd daemon handles this, and most other print-related requests, by constructing a command based on the printing services of the server operating system and by executing the command using the identity of the PC user. Since this involves set-user-id privileges, pcnfsd must be run as root.

Every print request from the client includes the name of the printer which is to be used. This name corresponds to a printer definition in the /etc/printcap database. If you want to define a nonstandard way of processing print data, you should define a new printer and arrange for the client to print to this printer. There are two ways of setting up a new printer. The first involves the addition of an entry to /etc/printcap and the creation of filters to perform the required processing. This is outside the scope of this discussion. In addition, pcnfsd includes a mechanism by which you can define virtual printers known only to pcnfsd clients. Each printer is defined by a line in the /etc/pcnfsd.conf file of the following format:

printer name alias-for command

The name variable is the name of the printer you want to define and the alias-for variable is the name of a ``real'' printer that corresponds to this printer. For example, a request to display the queue for name is translated into the corresponding request for the printer alias-for. If you have defined a printer in such a way that there is no ``real'' printer to which it corresponds, use a single dash (-) for this field. (See the definition of the printer test below for an example.) The command variable is a command that will be executed whenever a file is printed on name. This command is executed by the Bourne shell, /bin/sh, using the -c option. For complex operations you should construct an executable shell program and invoke that in command. Within command, the following tokens will be replaced:

Token
Substitution
$FILE
Replaced by the full pathname of the print data file. When the command has been executed, the file will be unlinked.
$USER
Replaced by the user name of the user logged in to the client system.
$HOST
Replaced by the host name of the client system.

The printer test is used only for testing. Any file sent to this printer will be copied into /usr/tmp. Any request to list the queue, check the status, and so on of printer test will be rejected because the alias-for has been specified as a dash (-).  

FILES

The pcnfsd configuration file.  

RELATED INFORMATION

Commands: lp(1), lpq(1), lpstat(1) delim off


 

Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
AVAILABILITY
AUTHENTICATION
PRINTING
FILES
RELATED INFORMATION

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Time: 02:40:31 GMT, October 02, 2010