NAME¶
netplan - IP server for
plan(1) appointment lists
SYNOPSIS¶
netplan [-f] [-d] [-v] [-a]
DESCRIPTION¶
netplan is an IP server that serves calendar data to
plan(1)
programs. It maintains the /var/lib/plan/netplan.dir directory, that contains
calendar files and an access list file.
plan users can name files and
hosts in their file list dialog, which causes
plan to establish a
connection to
netplan on the given host and request data from the file.
netplan handles multiple connections to the same file, sequences
updates to files such that no data can be lost if multiple simultaneous
updates are requested, and notifies connected
plan programs of changes
so they can update their displays.
OPTIONS¶
- -f
- Runs in the foreground. This is useful for debugging.
- -d
- Debug mode. This implies -f. All connections and transactions are logged
to the terminal. Among other things, the program version and file
locations are printed.
- -v
- Verbose. Together with -d, the verbosity of the log messages is increased
to include data requests. this can generate large numbers of
messages.
- -a
- Authentication via IDENTD (RFC 1413) is mandatory. If authentication
fails, map the client to UID/GID NOBODY. Use this only if all connecting
client hosts (running plan or pland ) support the identd
authentication service (you can find out by running ``telnet clienthost
113''; if telnet reports ``Connected'' type Ctrl-D, clienthost support
identd). If a client host that does not support identd connects to a
netplan server run with -a, it will have no or restricted access.
Also, if you use -a, you must have a netplan-acl file or no access is
granted to anybody; see below.
FILES¶
All files accessible to
netplan are stored in the
/var/lib/plan/netplan.dir directory.
netplan will not access any files
that are not in this directory or in subdirectories of this directory. It will
also refuse to access softlinks and files with multiple hard links. This
prevents users from linking normally inaccessible files to netplan.dir and
accessing them through
netplan . Finally, files beginning with a dot
are rejected to prevent access to netplan-acl and other future configuration
files.
/etc/plan/ may also contain a file netplan-acl that controls which user can
access which file. If the file is missing, no restrictions are imposed unless
netplan is started with the -a option, in which case no access to any
file is granted. The syntax for netplan-acl file is a sequence of rules like
this:
name | owner | * : [permit | deny] [read] [write] [delete]
[netmask n.n.n.n]
[[user | group | host] data [data...]]
name is the file the rule applies to; an asterisk (*) applies to all
files. The special name
owner applies to the file by the name of
current user, containing that user's ``own'' appointments.
Permit is the default. If none of read, write, or delete are specified, all
three are the default. The
netmask applies to the client's IP address.
The default netmask is 255.255.255.255.
data is one or more user names
or numerical UIDs, group names or numerical GIDs, or host names or numerical
n.n.n.n IP addresses for user, group, and host clauses, respectively. In user
clauses, values of the form user@host are also accepted. Symbolic names will
be looked up on the server host (where netplan is running) and will be
converted to numerical values while the ACL file is read. This assumes that
all hosts agree on symbolic and numeric user, group, and host IDs; the
plan/netplan protocol always uses numerical IDs and assumes that they
correspond to the same symbolic names on both hosts. If no user, group, or
host keyword and
data list is specified, the meaning is ``any''.
Trailing n=0 IP address components are not assumed to denote nets; use the
netmask specifier for subnet masking. All whitespace is ignored.
Pound signs (#) introduce comments that extend to the end of the line.
For example,
*: permit read
*: permit write host daphne
vacation: permit write user 207
thomas: deny user *
thomas: permit read write delete user 207 208
announce: permit write netmask 255.255.255.0 host 10.0.1.0
first permits reading all files to everybody, and restricts write access to
users on host daphne. The third line permits write access to the file
vacation to user 207, in addition to the read access permitted in lines
1-2. Next, read and write access for file
thomas is granted to users
207 and 208 only. Finally, the file
announce can be written by all
users on hosts whose network address begins with 10.0.1. Trailing
".0" parts need not be entered. The netmask basically specifies
which bits of the client address are compared; all addresses are binary-ANDed
with the netmask before comparison.
When opening a file, the rules are scanned sequentially. All rules whose file
part (before the colon) matches the opened file, set or clear permission flags
for reading and writing, based on the identity of the
plan client as
given by his user ID, group IDs, and IP address. The final settings of these
flags determine the permissions of the file for the client. The final
permission setting is the AND result of the permissions derived for the
host/netmask, and user/group part, respectively.
netplan tries to verify the identity of the client user with the IDENTD
(RFC 1413) protocol. If the identification succeeds, the client username is
mapped to UID and GIDs per the local passwd and group files on the server
host. If RFC 1413 identification is unsuccessful,
netplan trusts the
(numerical) identity provided by the client.
If the -a option is given on the invocation of
netplan, RFC 1413
identification becomes mandatory, and a failed identification will map the
client to the NOBODY UID and GID.
Note that although the ACL syntax was roughly patterned after TIS fwtk firewall
configuration files, the code and interpretation is rather different.
SECURITY¶
netplan trusts IP addresses to determine host (network) access
restrictions. If IP addresses cannot be trusted, host access restrictions
become meaningless.
Without RFC 1413 authetication, netplan trusts whatever user id and group id the
client provides. If
netplan is used through the regular
plan
front-end application, the access list file specifications are honored, but
any half-witted programmer can fake his identity using telnet or a hacked
version of
plan (the sources are, after all, freely available) to
circumvent the access restrictions.
If RFC 1413 authentication is mandatory (-a flag),
netplan still trusts
whatever the remote identd provides. If you cannot trust root on the remote
host, you cannot trust the identd result. (And if you cannot trust IP
addresses, you effectively cannot trust the remote root any more.)
In this version of
netplan, no challenge-response encryption is used to
guarantee secure transactions. This may or may not change in future versions.
In this version, access lists provide only a moderate protection.
DEBIAN NOTE¶
The location for /etc/plan/netplan-acl is specific to Debian GNU/Linux. For
compliance with FSSTND/FHS, it has been moved there from its traditional
/var/lib/plan/netplan.dir/.netplan-acl location. The program still accesses
that file via a symlink located at the traditional location.
SEE ALSO¶
plan(1).
AUTHOR¶
Thomas Driemeyer <thomas@bitrot.de>
Please send all complaints, comments, bug fixes, and porting experiences to me.
Always include your plan version as reported by "plan -v" in your
mail. To be added to the mailing list, send mail to majordomo@bitrot.de with
the line "subscribe plan" (without the quotes) in the message body
(not the subject).
See
http://www.bitrot.de/plan.html for new releases.