Provided by: pidentd_3.0.19.ds1-7_amd64 bug

NAME

       identd - TCP/IP IDENT protocol server

SYNOPSIS

       identd [options]

DESCRIPTION

       Identd is a server which implements the TCP/IP proposed standard IDENT user identification
       protocol as specified in the RFC 1413 document.

       identd operates by looking up specific TCP/IP connections and returning the user  name  of
       the  process owning the connection.  It can optionally return other information instead of
       a user name.

OPTIONS

       -h        Display the available command line options.

       -V        Displays the version and OS version it was compiled for, and then exit.

       -d        Enables extra debugging messages.

       -C<file>  Directs  identd  to  parse  additional  configuration  options  from  the   file
                 specified.

       -i        May  be  used  when  starting  the daemon by inetd with the "nowait" option (see
                 below).

       -w        May be used when starting the daemon  by  inetd  with  the  "wait"  option  (see
                 below).

       -I        May be used when the daemon is started by init (see below).

       -b        flag may be used to make the daemon run in standalone mode (see below).

       -u<user>  Used to specify a user number or name to which the server should switch to after
                 binding itself to the TCP/IP port and opening the kernel devices.

       -g<group> Used to specify a group number or name which the server should switch  to  after
                 binding itself to the TCP/IP port and opening the kernel devices.

       -p<port>  Used  to  specify an alternative TCP port to bind to, if running as a standalone
                 daemon or started by init Can be specified by name or by number. Defaults to the
                 IDENT port (113).

       -t<limit> Used to specify the request timeout limit. This is the maximum number of seconds
                 a server will allow a client connection to be active before terminating  it.  It
                 defaults to 120 seconds.

       -P<pidfile>
                 Specify the location of a file to store the process number of the Identd daemon.

       -K<nthreads>
                 Control the number of threads to use for kernel lookups

       -L<facility>
                 Set the syslog facility to use instead of 'daemon'.

       -o        Directs identd to return OTHER instead of UNIX as the "operating system".

       -E        Enables DES encryption of the returned data (see below for more information).

       -n        Directs  identd to always return user numbers instead of user names (for example
                 if you wish to keep the user names a secret).

       -N        Directs identd to check for a file ".noident" in each  home  directory  for  the
                 user  which the daemon is about to return the user name for. If that file exists
                 then the daemon will give the error HIDDEN-USER instead  of  the  normal  USERID
                 response.

       -e        Enables  certain  non-standard protocol extensions. Currently defined extensions
                 include the requests VERSION to return the Ident  daemon  version  and  QUIT  to
                 terminate a session (useful in conjunction with the -m option).

       -m        Enables  identd  to use a mode of operation that will allow multiple requests to
                 be processed per session. Each  request  is  specified  one  per  line  and  the
                 responses will be returned one per line. The connection will not be closed until
                 the connecting part closes it's end of the line.

INSTALLATION

       The preferred way to start identd depends on how it was built.

       If it was built with support for multithreading then it should be started either from init
       , as a standalone daemon or from inetd using the "wait" mode (if your inetd supports it!)

       If  it  was  built without support for multithreading then it should be started from inetd
       using the normal "nowait" mode for "stream tcp" services. (The main reason being  that  it
       will be single-threaded, so it will only serve one client connection at a time).

       identd normally will autodetect how it was invoked so there normally is no need to use the
       four command line switches (-i, -w, -I, -b).

ENCRYPTION

       DES encryption is only available if the daemon was built with support for it enabled.

       An encryption key (1024 bytes long) should be stored in the key file (  /etc/identd.key  )
       and  it should be generated using a cryptographically safe random generator in order to be
       really safe. It should not contain any NUL (0x00) characters  since  this  is  used  as  a
       string to generate the real binary DES key.

       This  file  may contain multiple 1024 byte long keys, and the server will use the last key
       stored in that file.

       The returned token will contain the local and remote IP addresses and  TCP  port  numbers,
       the  local user's uid number, a timestamp, a random number, and a checksum - all encrypted
       using DES. The encrypted binary information  is  then  encoded  in  a  BASE64  string  (32
       characters long) and enclosed in square brackets to produce a token that is transmitted to
       the remote client.

       The encrypted token can later be decrypted by the  idecrypt  command.  This  program  will
       attempt  to decrypt a token with all the keys stored in the key file until it succeeds (or
       have tried all the keys).

CONFIGURATION FILE

       The configuration file contains a list of option=value pairs.

       syslog:facility = FACILITY
                 Set which facility to use when sending syslog messages.  See syslog.conf(5)  for
                 more information.

       server:user = USER
                 Set  what  user  (and  group, from the passwd database) the daemon should run as
                 after it has opened all the kernel handles. (Default: nobody)

       server:group = GROUP
                 Override the group id (as set by the server:user option).

       server:port = PORT
                 Set what TCP/IP port the daemon should listen to. (Default: 113)

       server:backlog = LIMIT
                 Set the size of the server listen() backlog limit.

       server:pid-file = PATH
                 Set the path to the file where the server will store it's process id.

       server:max-request = LIMIT
                 Max number of concurrent requests allowed. Default is 0 (zero) which  means  "no
                 limit".

       protocol:extensions = ON/OFF
                 Enable/disable   the   nonstandard   protocol  extensions  (  VERSION  and  QUIT
                 currently). Default: off

       protocol:multiquery = ON/OFF
                 Enable/disable the multiple queries per connection feature. Default: off

       protocol:timeout = SECONDS
                 Max number of seconds since connection or last request. If set to 0  (zero),  no
                 timeout will be used. Default: 120 seconds.

       kernel:threads = LIMIT
                 Max number of threads doing kernel lookups concurrently. Default: 8

       kernel:buffers = LIMIT
                 Max number of queued kernel lookup requests. Default: 32

       kernel:attempts = LIMIT
                 Max number of times to retry a kernel lookup in case of failure.  Default: 5

       result:uid-only = YES/NO
                 Disable uid->username lookups (only return uid numbers). Default: no

       result:noident = ON/OFF
                 Enable/disable checking for the  ".noident" file in users home directories.

       result:charset = CHARSET
                 Define the character set returned in replies. Default: "US-ASCII"

       result:opsys = OPSYS
                 Define the operating system returned in replies. Default: "UNIX"

       result:syslog-level = LEVEL
                 If  set to anything other than "none", all requested replies will be sent to the
                 syslog service with the specified severity level.  See syslog.conf(5)  for  more
                 information.  Default: none

       result:encrypt = YES/NO
                 Enable  encryption  of  replies.  Only  available if Identd was built with a DES
                 encryption library.

       encrypt:key-file = PATH
                 Path to the file containing the encryption keys.

       include = PATH
                 Include (and parse) the contents of another configuration file.

NOTES

       The username (or UID) returned ought to be the login name. However it (probably, for  most
       architecture  implementations)  is the "real user ID" as stored with the process. Thus the
       UID returned may be different from the login name for setuid programs (or those running as
       root) which has done a setuid(3) call and their children. For example, it may (should?) be
       wrong for an incoming ftpd ; and we are probably interested in the running shell, not  the
       telnetd  for  an  incoming telnet session. (But of course identd returns info for outgoing
       connections, not incoming ones.)

FILES

       /etc/identd.conf
              Contains the default configuration options for identd.

       /etc/identd.key
              If compiled with DES encryption enabled, the 1024 first bytes of this file is  used
              to specify the secret key for encrypting replies.

       /var/run/identd/identd.pid
              Contains (if enabled) the process number of the identd daemon.

AVAILABILITY

       The  daemon  is  free  software. You can redistribute it and/or modify it as you wish - as
       long as you don't claim that you wrote it.

       The source code for the latest version of the daemon can always be FTP'd from one  of  the
       following addresses:

       Main site:  ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/ident/servers/

       Mirror:     ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/ident/servers/

       The author can be contacted at:

       Email:      Peter Eriksson <pen@lysator.liu.se>

SEE ALSO

       idecrypt(8) , ikeygen(8) , inetd.conf(5) ,

                                            8 Jan 1999                                  identd(8)