DM

Section: Maintenance Commands (8)
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BSD mandoc

NAME

dm - dungeon master

SYNOPSIS

ln -s dm game

DESCRIPTION

Dm is a program used to regulate game playing. Dm expects to be invoked with the name of a game that a user wishes to play. This is done by creating symbolic links to dm in the directory /usr/games for all of the regulated games. The actual binaries for these games should be placed in a ``hidden'' directory, /usr/games/hide that may only be accessed by the dm program. Dm determines if the requested game is available and, if so, runs it. The file /etc/dm.conf controls the conditions under which games may be run.

The file /etc/nogames may be used to ``turn off'' game playing. If the file exists, no game playing is allowed; the contents of the file will be displayed to any user requesting a game.

FILES

/etc/dm.conf: configuration file
/etc/nogames: turns off game playing
/usr/games/hide: directory of ``real'' binaries
/var/log/games.log: game logging file

BUGS

Two problems result from dm running the games setuid ``games'' First, all games that allow users to run UNIX commands should carefully set both the real and effective user id's immediately before executing those commands. Probably more important is that dm never be setuid anything but ``games'' so that compromising a game will result only in the user's ability to play games at will. Secondly, games which previously had no reason to run setuid and which accessed user files may have to be modified.

HISTORY

The dm command appeared in BSD 4.3 tahoe

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 06:46:15 GMT, May 19, 2025

DM