sfsagent(1)

NAME

sfsagent - SFS authentication agent

SYNOPSIS

sfsagent [-dnkF] -S sock [-c [prog [arg ...]] | keyname]

DESCRIPTION

sfsagent is the program users run to authenticate them

selves to remote file servers, to create symbolic links in /sfs

on the fly, and to look for revocation certificates. Many of the

features in sfsagent are controlled by the sfskey program and de

scribed in the sfskey documentation.

Ordinarily, a user runs sfsagent at the start of a ses

sion. sfsagent runs sfskey add to obtain a private key. As the

user touches each SFS file server for the first time, the agent

authenticates the user to the file server transparently using the

private key it has. At the end of the session, the user should

run sfskey kill to kill the agent.

OPTIONS

-d Stay in the foreground rather than forking and going

into the background

-n Do not attempt to communicate with the SFS file sys

tem. This can be useful for debugging, or for running an agent

on a machine that is not running an SFS client. If you specify

-n, you must also use the -S option, otherwise your agent will be

useless as there will be no way to communicate with it.

-k Atomically kill and replace any existing agent. Oth

erwise, if your agent is already running, sfsagent will refuse to

run again.

-F Turn off forwarding. By default programs other than

the file system can ask the agent to authenticate the user.

Specifying this option disables this functionality.

-S sock

Listen for connections from programs like sfskey on

the Unix domain socket sock. Ordinarily sfskey connects to the

agent through the client file system software, but it can use a

named Unix domain socket as well.

-c [prog [arg ...]]

By default, sfsagent on startup runs the command

sfskey add giving it whatever -t option and keyname you speci

fied. This allows you to fetch your first key as you start or

restart the agent. If you wish to run a different program, you

can specify it using -c. You might, for instance, wish to run a

shell-script that executes a sfskey add followed by several

sfskey certprog commands.

sfsagent runs the program with the environment vari

able SFS_AGENTSOCK set to -0 and a Unix domain socket on standard

input. Thus, when atomically killing and restarting the agent

using -k, the commands run by sfsagent talk to the new agent and

not the old.

If you don't wish to run any program at all when

starting sfsagent, simply supply the -c option with no prog.

This will start an new agent that has no private keys.

SEE ALSO

dirsearch(1), newaid(1), rex(1), sfskey(1), ssu(1),

sfs_config(5), sfs_hosts(5), sfs_srp_params(5), sfs_users(5),

sfsauthd_config(5), sfscd_config(5), sfsrosd_config(5),

sfsrwsd_config(5), sfssd_config(5), sfs_environ(7), funmount(8),

nfsmounter(8), sfsauthd(8), sfscd(8), sfsrosd(8), sfsrwcd(8),

sfsrwsd(8), sfssd(8), vidb(8)

The full documentation for SFS is maintained as a Texinfo

manual. If the info and SFS programs are properly installed at

your site, the command info SFS should give you access to the

complete manual.

For updates, documentation, and software distribution,

please see the SFS website at http://www.fs.net/.

AUTHOR

sfsdev@redlab.lcs.mit.edu

SFS 0.8pre 2006-07-20

SFSAGENT(1)