NAME

       uservd — supply user services

SYNOPSIS

       userv [-daemon]

DESCRIPTION

       uservd  is  the  daemon called by userv to have a task performed under different userid while maintaining
       limited trust between caller and callee.

OPTIONS

       There is one optional argument:

       -daemon     Requests that the program daemonise.   If  this  flag  is  supplied,  uservd  will  fork  and
                   completely detach from the controlling terminal.  If this option is not supplied, uservd will
                   remain  in  its starting process group and continue to use the supplied stderr stream for any
                   runtime system messages; this is useful for running  uservd  as  a  child  of  init.   Errors
                   detected by uservd itself will be reported via syslog in either case.

SYSLOG MESSAGES:

       uservd  issues  diagnostics of various kinds to syslog, with facility LOG_DAEMON.  The syslog levels used
       are:

       debug       Verbose messages about the activity of the userv daemon.

       info        Two log messages about the nature and outcome of each request.

       notice      Messages about the status of the daemon, including the startup message and the hourly  socket
                   check messages.

       warning     If the uservd exits because it believes that it no longer controls the rendezvous socket (ie,
                   its  socket  has become orphaned), this level will receive messages indicating why the daemon
                   believes this and notifying of its shutdown.

       err         A believed-recoverable error condition was detected by the userv server in itself, the client
                   or the operating system (this includes resource shortages). The uservd will try to continue.

       crit        The uservd detected a non-recoverable error condition after startup and will exit.

       alert       not used.

       emerg       not used.

       The service configuration language has the facility to direct error and warning messages to syslog.   The
       default facility and level is user.err, but the author of the configuration file(s) can override this.

EXIT STATUS

       The daemon's exit code will reflect how well things went:

       0           The  daemon was asked to detach itself from the controlling terminal and this appears to have
                   been done successfully.

       1*          The daemon got a SIGTERM or SIGINT and shut itself down.

       2*          The daemon believed that it was no longer the uservd and so exited to clean up.

       3           uservd was started with incorrect arguments.

       4           A system call failure or other environmental problem occurred during startup.

       5*          There was a non-recoverable error after startup; the uservd had to exit.

       6           The daemon was asked to detach itself, but its  detaching  child  died  for  some  unexpected
                   reason.

       SIGABRT/SIGIOT*
                   An  unexpected  internal error, usually caused by a bug in uservd.  This can also occur if an
                   attempt to block signals using sigprocmask fails.

       Outcomes marked * are not possible if the daemon is asked to detach itself - these exit statuses will  be
       reaped by init instead and so will not usually be logged anywhere.

       The  daemon's  per-request  children  will  report  the success or otherwise of its request in their exit
       status.  These are not usually be logged unless they indicate a serious problem.

ENVIRONMENT

       All of the environment variables passed to uservd will be inherited by services as part  of  the  default
       environment.   (If  the  set-environment configuration directive is used, then other system configuration
       files can modify the environment.  Consult the specification.)

SEE ALSO

       userv(1) init(8)

       Ian Jackson, User service daemon and client specification.

COPYRIGHT

       GNU userv is copyright Ian Jackson and other contributors.  See  README  or  userv  --copright  for  full
       authorship information.

       GNU  userv  is  licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence, version 3 or (at your option)
       any later version, and it comes with NO WARRANTY, not even the implied  warranty  of  MERCHANTABILITY  or
       FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for details.

       You  should  have  received  a  copy  of  the  GNU  General  Public License along with userv, if not, see
       http://www.gnu.org/licenses/

HISTORY

       uservd was initially written in 1996 by Ian Jackson.  It became GNU uservd in 1999, and version  1.0  was
       released in 2000.

userv                                           November 3, 1999                                       USERVD(8)