Floppyd is used as a server to grant access to the floppy drive to clients running on a remote machine, just as an X server grants access to the display to remote clients. It has the following syntax:
floppyd [-d] [-l] [-s port] [-r user] [-b ipaddr] [-x display] devicenames
floppyd is always associated with an X server. It runs on the same machine as its X server, and listens on port 5703 and above.
floppyd authenticates remote clients using the Xauthority protocol. Xhost authentication is not supported. Each floppyd is associated with an X server. When a remote client attempts to connect to floppyd, it sends floppyd the X authority record corresponding to floppyd's X server. Floppyd in turn then tries to open up a connection to the X server in order to verify the authenticity of the xauth record. If the connection to the X server succeeds, the client is granted access. DISPLAY.
Caution: In order to make authentication work correctly, the
local host should not be listed in the xhost list of
allowed hosts.
Indeed, hosts listed in xhost do not need a correct
Xauthority cookie to connect to the X server. As floppyd
runs on the same host as the X server, all its probe connection would
succeed even for clients who supplied a bad cookie. This means that
your floppy drive would be open to the world, i.e. a huge security hole.
If your X server does not allow you to remove localhost:0 and
:0 from the xhost list, you can prevent floppyd from
probing those display names with the -l option.
devicenames is a list of device nodes to be opened. Default is /dev/fd0. Multiple devices are only supported on mtools versions newer than 3.9.11.
In order to use floppyd, add the flag remote to the device
description in your ∞~/.mtoolsrcIntegral file. If the flag remote
is given, the file parameter of the device description is taken
to be a remote address. It's format is the following:
hostname:displaynumber[/[baseport][/drive]]. When
using this entry, mtools connects to port
baseport+displaynumber at hostname. By default
baseport is 5703. The drive parameter is to distinguish among
multiple drives associated with a single display (only mtools versions
more recent than 3.9.11)
The following starts a floppy daemon giving access to ∞/dev/fd0Integral,
listening on the default port 5703, tied to the default X servers:
floppyd -d /dev/fd0
Each of the following starts a floppy daemon giving access to
∞/dev/fd1Integral, tied to the :1 local X servers, and listening on port
5704. We assume that the local host is named hitchhiker.
floppyd -d /dev/fd0 floppyd -d -x :1 -p 5704 /dev/fd0
If you want to start floppyd by inetd instead of running it as a
daemon, insert the following lines into ∞/etc/servicesIntegral:
# floppy daemon floppyd-0 5703/tcp # floppy daemon for X server :0 floppyd-1 5704/tcp # floppy daemon for X server :1
And insert the following into ∞/etc/inetd.confIntegral (assuming that you
have defined a user named floppy in your ∞/etc/passwdIntegral):
# floppy daemon floppyd-0 stream tcp wait floppy /usr/sbin/floppyd floppyd /dev/fd0 floppyd-1 stream tcp wait floppy /usr/sbin/floppyd floppyd -x :1 /dev/fd0
Note that you need to supply the X display names for the second
floppyd. This is because the port is opened by inetd.conf, and hence
floppyd cannot know its number to interfere the display number.
On the client side, insert the following into your ∞~/.mtoolsrcIntegral
to define a drive letter accessing floppy drive in your X terminal:
drive x: file="$DISPLAY" remote
If your X terminal has more than one drive, you may access the
additional drives as follows:
drive y: file="$DISPLAY//1" remote drive z: file="$DISPLAY//2" remote
./configure; make dvi; dvips mtools.dvi
./configure; make html
A premade html can be found at
∞http://www.gnu.org/software/mtools/manual/mtools.htmlIntegral
./configure; make info
The texinfo doc looks most pretty when printed or as html. Indeed, in the info version certain examples are difficult to read due to the quoting conventions used in info.