Name
floppyd - floppy daemon for remote access to floppy drive
floppyd_installtest - tests whether floppyd is installed and running
Note of warning
This manpage has been automatically generated from mtools’s texinfo
documentation, and may not be entirely accurate or complete. See the
end of this man page for details.
Description
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.
Authentication
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.
Command line options
d Daemon mode. Floppyd runs its own server loop. Do not supply
this if you start floppyd from inetd.conf
s port
Port number for deamon mode. Default is 5703 + displaynumber.
This flag implies daemon mode. For example, for display
hitchhiker:5, the port would be 5708.
b ipaddr
Bind address (for multihomed hosts). This flag implies daemon
mode
r user
Run the server under as the given user
x display
X display to use for authentication. By default, this is taken
from the DISPLAY variable. If neither the x attribute is present
nor DISPLAY is set, floppyd uses :0.0.
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.
Connecting to floppyd
In order to use floppyd, add the flag remote to the device description
in your ‘~/.mtoolsrc’ 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)
Examples:
The following starts a floppy daemon giving access to ‘/dev/fd0’,
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/fd1’, 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/services’:
# 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.conf’ (assuming that you
have defined a user named floppy in your ‘/etc/passwd’):
# 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 ‘~/.mtoolsrc’ 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
See Also
Mtools’ texinfo doc
Viewing the texi doc
This manpage has been automatically generated from mtools’s texinfo
documentation. However, this process is only approximative, and some
items, such as crossreferences, footnotes and indices are lost in this
translation process. Indeed, these items have no appropriate
representation in the manpage format. Moreover, not all information
has been translated into the manpage version. Thus I strongly advise
you to use the original texinfo doc. See the end of this manpage for
instructions how to view the texinfo doc.
* To generate a printable copy from the texinfo doc, run the
following commands:
./configure; make dvi; dvips mtools.dvi
* To generate a html copy, run:
./configure; make html
A premade html can be found at
‘http://www.gnu.org/software/mtools/manual/mtools.html’
* To generate an info copy (browsable using emacs’ info mode),
run:
./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.