minidentd
Software
www.skarnet.org

The minidentd program

minidentd is a small UCSPI server application that answers IDENT requests.

Interface

     minidentd [ -v ] [ -n ] [ -i ] [ -r ] [ -y file ] [ -t timeout ]

minidentd reads a series of IDENT requests on stdin and answers them on stdout. It logs what it's doing on stderr. The environment variables xLOCALIP and xREMOTEIP, where x is the value of the PROTO environment variable, must contain the IDENT server address and the IDENT client address, respectively.

minidentd does not contact the network directly. It's meant to run under a super-server like tcpserver.

Options

• -v : verbose mode. Log queries and replies..
• -n : send ERROR : HIDDEN-USER replies if the user has a .ident file in his home directory.
• -i : user-defined answers. The first 14 chars of the user's .ident file, up to EOF or newline, are used instead of the user name. If the file exists and is empty, send ERROR : HIDDEN-USER. If it doesn't exist, send a normal reply.
• -r : send random replies.
• -y file : valid with -n or -i. Use file instead of .ident.
• -t timeout : close connection after timeout seconds without a client request.

Notes

• As of version 0.14, minidentd works only under Linux (2.2 or later). The problem is that there is no portable Unix way of listing active outgoing TCP connections with the relevant uids ! Under Linux, I parse the /proc/net/tcp virtual file, so make sure that the /proc filesystem is mounted.
• There is a sysctlbyname for FreeBSD that does the same thing, but I don't know whether a normal user can call it, and I don't know whether other *BSD have the same interface. If you have more information about that, or if you know of other interfaces for a Unix-like system, please let me know, and I'll try and port minidentd to that system.