Installing opensshd on Sun Cobalt Linux, shell interpreter issue

[David Levy]

I have just installed openssh on my Sun Cobalt Qube, running Linux.

The shell interpreter for the rc script forces /sbin/sh. This is defined 
in opensshd.init.in. This shell does not exist on this implementation of 
Linux. I have written about this in (much more) detail at 
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/DaveLevy/20060104. NB This would seem 
to me to be a common problem but I havn't found any references in the 
archives.

The following bourne shell code would test for the requirement for a fix.

if [ ! -x /sbin/sh ] && [ -x /bin/sh ]
then
# Change the shell interpreter
#  .......
fi

I suggest that

if [ ! -x /sbin/sh ]&& [ -x /bin/sh ]
then
# Change the shell interpreter
  script_ver=4_bin_sh
  cat ${opensshd_script_name} | sed -e "s?\#\!/sbin/sh?\#\!/bin/sh?g"  \
         >> ${opensshd_script_name}.${script_ver}
fi

would be one way of doing it.

This would yield a file called opensshd.init.in.4_bin_sh. The "if shell 
exists" test would need to be repeated in the install script to ensure 
that the correct script was copied from the install directory to 
/etc/rc.d/init.d directory.

The blog article http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/DaveLevy/20060104 also 
discusses Linux's chkconfig. This would be simple to implement and on 
systems where it exists, make the install task simpler. (Is this an 
enhancement request?)  This suggests that one script file for non 
chkconfig aware implementations and one for those that have it, although 
the opensshd.init.in only requires comment lines added. The install 
script would need to check for the existence of chkconfig and an 
implementation name scheme would need to be developed.

NB I am considering writing a "status" branch for opensshd.init, let me 
know if anyone's interested. (I shall probably only browse the process 
table and test it on my Qube's Linux).


-- 

Dave

<http://www.sun.com> 	* David Levy *
*Sun Microsystems Ltd.*
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London EC4R 9ND United Kingdom

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Blog http://blogs.sun.com/DaveLevy
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