RPC.PCNFSD(8)RPC.PCNFSD(8)NAME
pcnfsd, rpc.pcnfsd - (PC)NFS authentication and print request server
SYNOPSIS
/usr/sbin/rpc.pcnfsd
DESCRIPTIONpcnfsd is an RPC server that supports Sun ONC clients on PC (DOS, OS/2,
Macintosh, and other) systems. This page describes version two of the
pcnfsd server.
rpc.pcnfsd may be started from /etc/rc.local or by the inetd(8) super‐
daemon. It reads the configuration file /etc/pcnfsd.conf if present,
and then services RPC requests directed to program number 150001. This
release of the pcnfsd daemon supports both version 1 and version 2 of
the pcnfsd protocol. Consult the rpcgen source file pcnfsd.x for
details of the protocols.
The requests serviced by pcnfsd fall into three categories: authentica‐
tion, printing, and other. Only the authentication and printing ser‐
vices have administrative significance.
AUTHENTICATION
When pcnfsd receives a PCNFSD_AUTH or PCNFSD2_AUTH request, it will
"log in" the user by validating the username and password and returning
the corresponding uid, gids, home directory, and umask. If pcnfsd was
built with the WTMP compile-time option, it will also append a record
to the wtmp(5) data base. If you do not wish to record PC "logins" in
this way, you should add a line of the form
wtmp off
to the /etc/pcnfsd.conf file.
PRINTINGpcnfsd supports a printing model based on the use of NFS to transfer
the actual print data from the client to the server. The client system
issues a PCNFSD_PR_INIT or PCNFSD2_PR_INIT request, and the server
returns the path to a spool directory which the client may use and
which is exported by NFS. pcnfsd creates a subdirectory for each of
its clients: the parent directory is normally /export/pcnfs and the
subdirectory is the hostname of the client system. If you wish to use
a different parent directory, you should add a line of the form
spooldir path
to the /etc/pcnfsd.conf file.
Once a client has mounted the spool directory using NFS and has trans‐
ferred print data to a file in this directory, it will issue a PCN‐
FSD_PR_START or PCNFSD2_PR_START request. pcnfsd handles this, and
most other print-related requests, by constructing a command based on
the printing services of the server operating system and executing the
command using the identity of the PC user. Since this involves set-
user-id privileges, pcnfsd must be run as root.
Every print request from the client includes the name of the printer
which is to be used. In SunOS, this name corresponds to a printer defi‐
nition in the /etc/printcap(5) database. If you wish to define a non-
standard way of processing print data, you should define a new printer
and arrange for the client to print to this printer. There are two ways
of setting up a new printer. The first involves the addition of an
entry to /etc/printcap(5) and the creation of filters to perform the
required processing. This is outside the scope of this discussion. In
addition, pcnfsd includes a mechanism by which you can define virtual
printers known only to pcnfsd clients. Each printer is defined by a
line in the /etc/pcnfsd.conf file of the following form
printer name alias-for command
name is the name of the printer you want to define. alias-for is the
name of a "real" printer which corresponds to this printer. For exam‐
ple, a request to display the queue for name will be translated into
the corresponding request for the printer alias-for. If you have
defined a printer in such a way that there is no "real" printer to
which it corresponds, use a single "-" for this field. (See the defini‐
tion of the printer test below for an example.) command is a command
which will be executed whenever a file is printed on name. This com‐
mand is executed by the Bourne shell, /bin/sh using the -c option. For
complex operations you should construct an executable shell program and
invoke that in command. Within command the following tokens will be
replaced:
Token Substitution
$FILE Replaced by the full path name of the print data file. When
the command has been executed, the file will be unlinked.
$USER Replaced by the username of the user logged in to the client
system.
$HOST Replaced by the host name of the client system.
Consider the following example /etc/pcnfsd.conf file:
printer rotated lw /usr/local/bin/enscript -2r $FILE
printer test - /usr/bin/cp $FILE /usr/tmp/$HOST-$USER
If a client system prints a job on the printer rotated the utility
enscript will be invoked to pre-process the file $FILE. In this case,
the -2r option causes the file to be printed in two-column rotated for‐
mat on the default PostScript® printer. If the client requests a list
of the print queue for the printer rotated the pcnfsd daemon will
translate this into a request for a listing for the printer lw.
The printer test is used only for testing. Any file sent to this
printer will be copied into /usr/tmp. Any request to list the queue,
check the status, etc. of printer test will be rejected because the
alias-for has been specified as "-".
FILES
/etc/pcnfsd.conf configuration file
/export/pcnfs default print spool directory
SEE ALSOlpr(1), lpc(8)HISTORY
The pcnfsd source code is distributed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. with
their PC/NFS product under terms described in common.h in that source
code. Those terms require that you be informed that this version of
pcnfsd was modified to run on NetBSD and is NOT supported by Sun.
25 April 1991 RPC.PCNFSD(8)
