identd(8) identd(8)
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 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 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 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 Used to specify an alternative TCP port to bind to, if run
ning as a standalone daemon or started by init Can be speci
fied by name or by number. Defaults to the IDENT port (113).
-t Used to specify the request timeout limit. This is the maxi
mum number of seconds a server will allow a client connection
to be active before terminating it. It defaults to 120 sec
onds.
-P
Specify the location of a file to store the process number of
the Identd daemon.
-K
Control the number of threads to use for kernel lookups
-L
Set the syslog facility to use instead of daemon.
-o Directs identd to return OTHER instead of UNIX as the "oper
ating 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 its 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" ser
vices. (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 users 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 dae
mon 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 its
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 sec
onds.
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 fail
ure. 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 dont claim that you wrote it.
The source code for the latest version of the daemon can always be
FTPd 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
SEE ALSO
idecrypt(8) , ikeygen(8) , inetd.conf(5) ,
8 Jan 1999 identd(8)
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