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

[Carsten Hoeger <choeger@suse.de>]

On Mon, 10 Nov 1997 Matthias.Apitz@SOFTCON.de wrote:

> 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):

The uucp-locking directory is /var/lock in our system...
 
> $ 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.?

Some guys here weren't very happy with this solution, so I tried to give
fax another uid, changed the faxaddmodem to give the FIFO.xxx file
uucp.uucp as owner and all seems to work -all I have tested-. I use the
faxserver at home, at our company and several other people use it, too.
 
> 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:

I'll try to find it out...
 
> # 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
> 

mfG,
	Carsten Hoeger
------
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