[Serusers] SER 0.8.14 bug report

Andrei Pelinescu-Onciul pelinescu-onciul at fokus.fraunhofer.de
Wed Sep 1 20:14:10 CEST 2004


On Aug 28, 2004 at 23:57, Steve I. Peterson <sip at shopip.com> wrote:
> SER bugs found under OpenBSD 3.5:

Thanks for the bug report, see comments inline.
> 
> ser 0.8.14 binary:
> ------------------
> 
> The ser-0.8.14_openbsd_i386.tar.gz binary will not work since the
> executable is in the obsolete a.out format instead of ELF.

Yes, from the README (ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/ser/latest/README):
   bin/          - contains compiled ser versions for various arhitectures:
                    ser-0.8.14_freebsd_i386.tar.gz       (freebsd 4.9)
                    ser-0.8.14_linux_i386.tar.gz         (linux libc6)
                    ser-0.8.14_netbsd_sparc64.tar.gz     (netbsd  1.6)
                    ser-0.8.14_openbsd_i386.tar.gz       (openbsd 3.2)
                                                          ^^^^^^^^^^^
                    ser-0.8.14_solaris_sparc64.tar.gz    (solaris 8.0)
                    ser-0.8.14_darwin_ppc.tar.gz         (mac os x)

Yes, I do know I have an obsolete openbsd version :-)

> 
> ser 0.8.14 source:
> ------------------
> 
> make produced syntax errors, so I used gmake.

Yes, this is documented in INSTALL.
> 
> It runs! Strangely, it doesn't emit an error or warning even when there is
> no ser.cfg file at all. It doesn't seem to find /etc/ser/ser.cfg or
> /etc/ser.cfg when I put one there

By default if you build ser, it will load the config from
/usr/local/etc/ser/ser.cfg.

> 
> Upon run it reports WARNING: could not read from /dev/random.
> Under OpenBSD, /dev/random is reserved for hardware RNG's. Use
> /dev/arandom (or /dev/urandom) instead.

Yes, I consider switching to /dev/urandom on all archs.
> 
> There is confusion over whether the config file is /etc/ser.cfg or
> /etc/ser/ser.cfg. The ser man page erroneously says the -f default is
> ./ser.cfg instead of /etc/...

The default config file is /usr/local/etc/ser/ser.cfg on solaris, *bsd
or linux (if you build it by hand). If you use a linux package (deb or
rpm) the config is in /etc/ser/ser.cfg and ser is installed directly in
/usr.
> 
> man page errors:
> Under FILES:
> it lists /etc/ser/ser.cfg instead of /etc/ser.cfg -which is correct?
> Also,    /usr/sbin/ser            should be   /usr/local/sbin/ser
> Also,    /usr/lib/ser/modules/*   is really   /usr/local/lib/ser/modules/*

Well this is because the path is different depending on how you install
it. Since most people use pre-packaged versions, or compile the package
themselves this works for them.
Some on-man-page install sed script would be needed to fix this.

> 
> Missing: There is no man page for serctl.
> 
> Also, /usr/share/doc/ser/README.cfg should be
>       /usr/local/share/doc/ser/README.cfg

I couldn't find this mentioned anywhere in the  man page.

> The file /usr/local/share/examples/ser/ser.cfg should be mentioned by the
> man page.
> 
> Installation: The example ser.cfg should be copied to /etc/ser.cfg
> 
> Under OpenBSD, /usr/sbin and /usr/local/bin are in the path, but
> /usr/local/sbin is not (go figure). This means ser will no execute
> directly since it is not in the path. This may be a reason to use
> /usr/sbin instead of /usr/local/sbin.
> 
> Personally, I don't care whether ser and it's files go in .../local/... or
> not, as long as the documentation reflects this accurately.
> 

We do accept patches :-)


Andrei




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