Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!ucselx!petunia!csuchico.edu!warlock
From: warlock@ecst.csuchico.edu (John Kennedy)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: NNTP 1.5.10 / Cnews 15-Dec-1990 / Stupid UNIX exec
Message-ID: <1991Jan30.062800.15853@ecst.csuchico.edu>
Date: 30 Jan 91 06:28:00 GMT
Sender: news@ecst.csuchico.edu (USENET)
Organization: California State University, Chico
Lines: 37


  I'm setting up a system with these beasties, and I've run into a hurdle
that someone may have delt with already or have a clever solution to.

  When a remote Pnews batches up an article, it is received by NNTP, tossed
into a temporary file in /usr/tmp, and it forks/execs inews.  Fine and dandy,
expect that inews is a shell script and I can't do any sort of an exec() on
anything but a a.out-format file.  It seems to be happy by execing ksh and
passing along the arguments to inews for ksh to deal with.  (Seemingly solved
-- I only mention it because it isn't stock behavior).

  Inside inews, our pal anne.jones is called.  Anne decides she must call "who
am I" for some reason.  (Lack of $USER being set?  What should it be set to?)
This is EVIL -- who yacks because the user isn't on a terminal and it can't
find the name.  The decent into darkness has begun.

  It makes two other attempts to find a user's name, and probably with no name
to look with, either, since the "who" failed.  It looks in /etc/passwd, which
fails because the machine doesn't have user accounts and then ypmatch, which
the machine doesn't have at all.

  Burp, regurgitate, error, nothing posted.

  Now:
	(A)  What is our little Anne trying to look up?  The name that NNTP
		runs under, or the user's name?
	(B)  Can I just write something to do what "who am i" should?  (If so,
		I presume it should return the info for (A).)
	(C)  Is there a more clever way to do this whole thing?

  Thanks.

-- 
			+----------------------------------------------------
Warlock, AKA		| internet:	warlock@ecst.csuchico.edu
John Kennedy		+----------------------------------------------------
CSU Chico			IBM, You BM, We All BM for IBM!