Re: flexfax: faxsetup on Linux (bug in moduser?)

[Matthias.Apitz@SOFTCON.de]

Carsten Hoeger wrote:
    
    On Sun, 9 Nov 1997 Matthias.Apitz@SOFTCON.de wrote:
    
    > I'm checking the faxsetup(1M) on Linux (to detect any problems
    > and see if it works reliable). For some unknown reason my Linux
    > box (S.u.S.E.) is shipped with a user "fax" in /etc/passwd and
    
    The reason is, in my opinion the package mgetty+sendfax from Gert Doering.
    This package needs this user, too.
    
    > HylaFAX's faxsetup(1M) wants to modify this ("fax" must have
    > the same uid as "uucp"). But it seems that there is a bug
    
    By this reason, I made some very raw changes in the faxsetup-script from
    HylaFAX, that comes with S.u.S.E. Linux 5.0.0#2 and higher. After these
    changes, the question to modify /etc/passwd disappears -that's not a very
    good solution, but I had to find a quick solution-.

    Another point is, that the uid of uucp and fax has to be the same. That's
    not a very good solution. We changed this and put uucp and fax in the same
    group. That works...

The reason for uid(uucp) == uid(fax) are the lock files of UUCP.
The normal directory for UUCP-locking is /var/spool/locks,
owned by "uucp" with permission 0755. I just checked another
Linux box in my company (also a S.u.S.E. distribution)
but there seems to be a bug (don't know if this system still
matches the CD-ROM):

$ uname -a
Linux wilson 2.0.14 #5 Thu Aug 22 17:01:26 MET DST 1996 i586
$ ls -ld /var/spool/locks
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root            4 Mar 17  1995 /var/spool/locks -> lock
$ cd /var/spool/locks
bash: /var/spool/locks: No such file or directory
$

If you set "fax" and "uucp" into the same group (e.g. "uucp")
you must (at least) also change the rights of this directory.

If mgetty+sendfax can live with any uid for "fax" why not
setting it to the same as "uucp" per default in S.u.S.E.?

Do you have any information why usermod(1M) is exiting with 12
in case of existing HOME dir? This is the real problem at all.
On my SVR4.2 Onsite UNIX usermod(1M) works like that:

# grep fax /etc/passwd
fax:x:5:5:Facsimile Agent:/var/spool/fax:/usr/bin/sh
# usermod -d /tmp fax
# echo $?
0
# grep fax /etc/passwd
fax:x:5:5:Facsimile Agent:/tmp:/usr/bin/sh
# 

Another workaround could be not to change the HOME for "fax".
HylaFAX doesn't care about fax's $HOME.

	matthias