DESCRIPTION
Supfilesrv is the server processes used to interact with
sup client processes via the IP/TCP network protocol. This server normally is expected to be running on server machines at all times. Each machine with files of interest to users on other machines is expected to be a file server and should run
supfilesrv.
A file server machine will service requests for both "private" and "system" file collections. No special action is necessary to support private collections, as the client user is expected to supply all necessary information. For system collections, if the base directory is not the default (see FILES below), an entry must be put into the directory list file; this entry is a single text line containing the name of the collection, one or more spaces, and the name of the base directory for that collection.
Each collection should have an entry in the host list file; this entry is a single text line containing the name of the collection, one or more spaces, and the name of the host machine acting as file server for that collection.
Details of setting up a file collection for the file server are described in the manual entry for
sup(1).
Supfilesrv generally runs as a network server process that listens for connections, and for each connection (double-)forks a process to handle the interaction with the client. However, with the -d flag, no forking will take place: the server will listen for a network connection, handle it, and exit. This is useful for debugging the servers in "live" mode rather than as daemons.
If anonymous serving of files is desired, an account
anon needs to exist. This account should have /sbin/nologin as shell, no password, needs to be able to read the files to be served (but not to write or to own them), and should have as home the directory containing the files to be served.
For debugging purposes, the -P "debugging ports" flag can be used. It will cause the selection of an alternate, non-privileged set of TCP ports instead of the usual ports, which are reserved for the active server processes. The -N "network debugging" flag can be used to produce voluminous messages describing the network communication progress and status. The more -N switches that you use the more output you get. Use 3 (separated by spaces: -N -N -N) to get a complete record of all network messages. Log messages are printed by
syslog on
daemon.log . To suppress log messages, the -q "quiet" flag can be used.
supfilesrv uses libwrap style access control (the /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny files) with service name "supfilesrv". The -l "log" flag turn on loggin of accepted connections (denied connections are always logged).
Normally the
supfilesrv will only respond to 3 requests simultaneously, forking a child process for each client. If it gets additional requests it will respond with the error FSSETUPBUSY. The -C MaxChildren switch can be used to increase (or decrease) this number.
supfilesrv listens to IPv4 listening socket by default. With the -6 flag, it will listen to IPv6 listening socket. For dual stack support you will want to run two instances of
supfilesrv.
