NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/comp/unix/admin/6073

Text File | 1992-11-07 | 1.8 KB | 38 lines

Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Path: sparky!uunet!charon.amdahl.com!pacbell.com!decwrl!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!sdd.hp.com!news.cs.indiana.edu!nstn.ns.ca!cs.dal.ca!silvert
From: [e-mail] (Bill Silvert)
Subject: Re: Limited telnet program?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (USENET News)
Nntp-Posting-Host: cs.cs.dal.ca
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Bill Silvert)
Organization: Math, Stats & CS, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada
References: <[e-mail]>
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Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 01:38:03 GMT
Lines: 23

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (James Deibele) writes:

>I would like to set up a limited telnet program for people to use.
>Specifically, I'd like to provide local librarians a way of telneting to
>selected online library catalogs via a menu.  If the telnet to that site
>fails, I would want the telnet program to exit with an error level,
>which I could then catch with a shell or program.  I don't want people
>who use this account to be able to exit to a shell from within telnet,
>and I don't want them to be able to telnet elsewhere.

Instead of hacking telnet, why not just restrict the account they log in to?
I've set up accounts which run programs as shells.  For example, if you
decide to use gopher as the menu program, write a program (I can provide
an example) which sets the TERM=vt100 and SHELL=/dev/null environment
variables and then runs gopher.

As for restricting where they telnet, you can always write a program
that uses a system call to run telnet, but you will have to make sure
that telnet is not available to them directly.  Perhaps with chroot?
--
William Silvert, Habitat Ecology Division, Bedford Inst. of Oceanography
P. O. Box 1006, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, CANADA B2Y 4A2.  Tel. [phone]
InterNet Address: [e-mail]