Bug 389975 – net-analyzer/netperf-2.5.0: init script does not start netserver

• Status: RESOLVED FIXED
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Nathan Shearer 2011-11-09 15:41:12 UTC]

emerge =net-analyzer/netperf-2.5.0 and you will find that /etc/init.d/netperf does not start the netserver. It is because there are 2 deprecated arguments being passed to start-stop-daemon: --quiet and --chuid.

After removing --quiet and --chuid the init script begins to work as expected.

I am using start-stop-daemon (OpenRC) 0.8.3 (Gentoo Linux) from sys-apps/openrc-0.8.3-r1

[Comment 1 Nathan Shearer 2011-11-09 16:26:39 UTC]

It looks like the newinitd helper creates broken init scripts. Isn't this a problem with portage and not netperf?

[Comment 2 Jeroen Roovers (RETIRED) 2011-11-12 15:57:58 UTC]

newinitd simply installs an existing file under a new name - it's the existing file ($PORTDIR/net-analyzer/netperf/files/netperf-2.2-init) that needs to be fixed.

[Comment 3 Jeroen Roovers (RETIRED) 2011-11-12 16:33:39 UTC]

Puzzling is that bug #170569 appears to have fixed a security bug by logging to /var/log as user nobody, who normally wouldn't have permission to create files there!

[Comment 4 Michael Palimaka (kensington) 2011-11-17 15:09:17 UTC]

Created attachment 292901 [details, diff]
use separate directory for logs

Patch to use separate directory and user for logging.

[Comment 5 Michael Palimaka (kensington) 2011-11-17 15:14:40 UTC]

Created attachment 292905 [details, diff]
init script patch

simple patch for initscript

[Comment 6 Christian Ruppert (idl0r) 2011-12-31 20:15:22 UTC]

Fixed in CVS.

For the logging issue file a separate bug please.

[Comment 7 Jeroen Roovers (RETIRED) 2012-06-13 16:27:42 UTC]

This isn't fixed. After removing the --quiet option and the redirect to /dev/null from the init.d script, it becomes obvious why netserver does not start:

wieneke ~ # /etc/init.d/netperf restart
 * Caching service dependencies ...                           [ ok ]
 * Stopping netperf server (netserver) ...                    [ ok ]
 * Starting netperf server (netserver) ...
Starting netserver with host 'IN(6)ADDR_ANY' port '12865' and family AF_UNSPEC
netserver: debug file: Permission denied                      [ ok ]

When we set --user nobody, we should also make sure that the user can write files.

[Comment 8 Roger 2012-12-11 23:18:42 UTC]

Sorry, th attached init script patch does not work. (Attachment #292905 [details, diff])

The error, "User 'netperf' not found."

The hack that does work, is simply edit the init script and remove "--user user_id".  There's also no "network" group within /etc/group here, so not sure as to what the intentions of specifying user|group here.

First off, if security is for some reason desired for such a simple program, I'd recommend using group instead of user... correct?

Personally, I'd just dump the "--user" field as it's a sure fix, unless somebody wants to post a "real fix", so this bug can be closed.

[Comment 9 Roger 2012-12-11 23:21:02 UTC]

Created attachment 332086 [details]
A quick patch to omit the --user option/arg

[Comment 10 Roger 2012-12-11 23:39:08 UTC]

My patch is against, netperf-2.5.0-r1.

I'm seeing several recent masked versions.

[Comment 11 Bruce Schultz 2014-01-05 09:35:04 UTC]

The netserver option -N surpresses the debug output, so it doesn't try to open the file.

/etc/conf.d/netperf:
NETSERVER_ARGS="-N"

Seems to be a simpler fix than patching the init script.

[Comment 12 Jeroen Roovers (RETIRED) 2016-08-09 08:41:21 UTC]

Fixed in 2.7.0-r1.