RHBA-2009:0442 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated authd package that fixes various bugs is now available.

Description

The authd package contains a small and fast RFC 1413 ident protocol daemon
with both xinetd server and interactive modes that supports IPv6 and IPv4
as well as the more popular features of pidentd.

This updated authd package includes fixes for the following bugs:

• on 64-bit architectures, a size mismatch between data structures led to

an endlessly repeating pattern of output, though no error. This size
mismatch has been fixed in this updated package so that authd works as
expected.

• attempting to connect to a Postgresql database using identd

authentication resulted in error messages similar to the following in
Postgresql's pg_log, where [user] is the username of the user attempting to
connect:

CESTLOG: invalidly formatted response from Ident server: "49795 ,
5432 : ERROR :[user]

This authd error has been corrected so that users are now able to log in
successfully, thus resolving the issue.

• previously, installing the authd package resulted in the creation of a

user named "ident" with a home directory of /home/ident. With this updated
package, the "ident" user is still created, but, by convention, ident's
home directory is the root ("/") directory.

All users of authd are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which
resolves these issues.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure that all previously-released
errata relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via Red Hat Network. Details on how to use
the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 5 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 5 ppc
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 i386

Fixes

• BZ - 446844 - in.authd gives strange response, segfaults
• BZ - 458144 - default home dir is /home/ident

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)