Re: [netatalk-admins] a cold wind bloweth


Subject: Re: [netatalk-admins] a cold wind bloweth
From: a sun (asun@saul6.u.washington.edu)
Date: Tue May 25 1999 - 16:34:50 EDT


   I recently built asun 2.1.3. My largest complaint is how difficult it
   was to build correctly. I agree that tcp wrappers should be the
   default for the AFP/TCP support. I'm not in favor of configure
   scripts. I think most decisions can be made with only the system
   version. In the case of Linux, I think we should probably be creating
   RPMs, since version skew is so rampant.

when i go to a new system, i just turn off all of the options and then
turn them on as i build the various bits. many of the features are
optional on any system. i don't know how you handle that with a global
Makefile. here's what i see:

        1) DESDIR/CRYPTODIR: optional on any system. it's really
           useful though if you want reasonably secure
           authentication.

        2) PAM: doesn't work with solaris for some unknown reason
           related with session management, but it might work in the
           future. it works with linux, but not all distributions use
           pam. pam is also a separate package that can be installed
           on other systems.

        3) TCPWRAPDIR: installed by default on *bsd/linux
           systems. optional on others.

        4) CRACKDIR: installed with redhat linux. optional on other
           systems (i've been beefing up the password stuff lately).

        5) DB2DIR: currently unused, but it will become mandatory in
           the future. it's installed by default on the recent *bsds
           and in glibc 2.1 systems.

these could all be checked/asked for pretty easily. i can just as
easily turn them all off, but then people start complaining about
"missing" features.

then's there are all of the system specific bits:
        1) linux: there are a bunch of defines in sys/linux to handle
                  various broken bits and different library/kernel
                  versions. some distributions need -lcrypt while
                  others don't. ditto for -lrpcsvc and -lresolv. mondo
                  yucko.
                  
        2) solaris: solaris 2.5.1, 2.6, and 7 (nee 2.7) all do things
           slightly differently. i've simplified what defines need to
           get passed for things to work, but the default (for solaris
           7) breaks on solaris 2.5.1.

        3) *bsd: they suffer from some version skew as well.

        3) sys/generic. There are a whole host of different defines
           that are useable for porting. it's currently setup for os x
           server. i suppose i could just move the os x server defines
           into a sys/osxserver directory, but that still leaves all
           of the afpd-only other platforms.

part of this is solvable via uname -r/-m being passed in as
OSVERSION/MACHINETYPE, but the other bits aren't detectable in that
fashion.

   Well, let's try to focus on making this frozen version netatalk 2.0.
   That, I think ought to include a source review/update for
   ansi/posix/modern coding standards.

okay. i didn't realize that that was the plan. i've done a bunch of
stuff for afpd during my attempt to get things to compile on random
oses. the pap stuff, however, needs serious work. that said, i don't
have a lot of time to go through the parts of the code that i don't
touch much right now or to test all the random platforms/os versions
that exist. i have ready access to several redhat linux 5.2-based
machines and os x server, but that's about all.

and then there's that dissertation ...

-a



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