Hi! I noticed that netkit-rsh is orphaned and there are even requests to remove it: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1041864 That is stalled because there are two reverse dependencies that allegedly uses: pdsh and pvm. I was thinking that the inetutils package could provide the rsh-client and rsh-server packages, allowing netkit-rsh to be removed from Debian. Currently the Debian packaging of inetutils doesn't build rsh/rshd though. What do you think? Some experiment would be needed to make sure pdsh/pvm (and their reverse dependencies) still build and work. It would help to analyze any differences between netkit and inetutils rsh and rshd too. /Simon
PVM seems irrelevant these days and should probably be removed; there is already #1059644 for that, but it still has reverse dependencies. pdsh already depends on openssh-client and the package description states "It has built-in, thread-safe clients for rsh". I wonder if it really needs rsh-client or whether that dependency could just be dropped? Ansgar
Hi! This crosses my mind some time ago, and started preparing the changes, but then stopped when I realized these clients and daemons would end up with no Kerberos 5 support (they seem to have Shishi support but the packaging was switched away from that, and rexec* has no Kerberos support whatsoever), which made me rather uncomfortable. See the following old branches which I've just rebased and pushed: https://git.hadrons.org/cgit/debian/pkgs/inetutils.git/commit/?h=pu/rsh https://git.hadrons.org/cgit/debian/pkgs/inetutils.git/log/?h=pu/rexec I realize that would be no worse than the current netkit implementations (AFAICT), but I'd rather not maintain these clients/servers if they do not even have an option for secure connections. Once the above is covered, then this would need to be done too, yes. :) Thanks, Guillem
fre 2023-12-29 klockan 23:09 +0100 skrev Guillem Jover: at src/rsh*.c in inetutils there is plenty of Kerberos stuff in it. Doesn't it work? We build inetutils against MIT Kerberos V5 in GitLab CI/CD: https://gitlab.com/jas/inetutils/-/jobs/5836939514 I think there is value in having a plaintext-able rsh and rshd available for interacting with ancient systems. The current netkit-rsh package does not support Kerberos. I feel it may be more appropriate to replace netkit-rsh with a inetutils-rsh of the same feature-set rather than with a Kerberos-enabled variant. Offering both would be even better. But simply enabling Kerberos V5 for rsh/rsh in inetutils and ship that is probably sufficient and resolves all concerns. /Simon