On Sun, 2002-06-23 at 23:38, Alan Millar wrote:
From: micheas <micheas@micheas.dyns.net>
FreeBSD does not have an equivalent of linux's 'su -c'
Equivalent? You're right the FreeBSD "su" command does not have the same option to run an arbitrary command as an argument, but there are other ways to solve the problem. Worst case, the z3950-daemon-shell can be SUID with the appropriate file owner. Not the ideal solution, but it is functionally equivalent. I think this falls in the "keep looking" category.
Are any of the environment names set by the shell script passed to the perl script that runs the daemon by name (ie do I have to keep your variable names?)
No, you don't have to keep them. Do they need to be changed? If they aren't descriptive or explanatory enough, let's change them in the current script also.
I found the label "KohaDir" non-obvious. It refers to the z39.50 script directory, not the root directory of Koha. Z3950Dir would seem to be a better name.
Is there any reason to not have apache call the script? (ie does anything have to be done as root?)
Yes, there is a reason not to. For one, the Linux "su -c" does need to be root. Also, the script should be run once, not everytime someone makes a search request. I don't think Apache was designed to be an arbitrary launcher, so it would probably be a lot *more* work to shoe-horn it into Apache. And the search daemon isn't really Apache related. I have some command-line text-mode add-ons for Koha, which may show up in the release later, which use the Z39.50 search facilities. They don't have anything to do with Apache, and neither does the search daemon.
<snipping other useful comments for brevity> Talking over the issue of the Z39.50 daemon could we modify the safe_mysqld script to work? It's already reasonably cross platform, well tested, and seems to be designed to solve the same type of problems that I've been reading about with the Z39.50 daemon. Micheas