remctl 3.0 released

[Russ Allbery]

I'm pleased to announce release 3.0 of remctl.

remctl is a client/server application that supports remote execution of
specific commands, using Kerberos v5 GSS-API for authentication.
Authorization is controlled by a configuration file and ACL files and can
be set separately for each command, unlike with rsh.  remctl is like a
Kerberos-authenticated simple CGI server, or a combination of Kerberos rsh
and sudo without most of the features and complexity of either.

Changes from previous release:

    New protocol version 3, which introduces a new NOOP message.  When the
    client sends this message, the server replies with a NOOP message.
    This can be used to keep a persistent remctl connection alive despite
    network session timeouts.  Add new remctl_noop function to the remctl
    library API and the Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby bindings to send the
    NOOP message and read the response.

    Be more explicit in the protocol about handling of continuation
    commands.  Do not allow any messages from the client after a continued
    command except the continuation of that command or a QUIT message.
    Explicitly document that a QUIT message abandons the partial command.
    Add the new ERROR_UNEXPECTED_MESSAGE error code, used when the client
    sends incorrect messages during a command continuation.

    The server no longer closes the connection after version or error
    replies.  The connection will now stay open until MESSAGE_COMMAND is
    sent without keepalive or MESSAGE_QUIT is sent.

    Add new remctl_set_source_ip function to the remctl library API and
    the Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby bindings.  Call this function after
    remctl_new and before remctl_open to set the source IP address that
    will be used for subequent client connections to a remctl server.  For
    the Ruby bindings, this is implemented as the source_ip class variable
    rather than a separate method.

    Add new -b option to the remctl command-line client to specify the
    source IP for client connections.

    Add new remctl_set_ccache function to the remctl library API and the
    Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby bindings.  Call this function after
    remctl_new and before remctl_open to set the Kerberos credential cache
    that will be used for client authentication, overriding KRB5CCNAME.
    Be aware that this will normally change the default credential cache
    for all other GSS-API operations in this context or thread, not just
    for that remctl object, due to GSS-API limitations.  For the Ruby
    bindings, this is implemented as the ccache class variable rather than
    a separate method.

    In the client, only check the negotiated GSS-API context flags after
    the context has been fully established.  Current versions of Heimdal,
    including the system Kerberos libraries in Mac OS X Lion, only declare
    mutual authentication once the context negotiation is complete.

    Close a client memory leak caused by the GSS-API context not being
    freed by the client in remctl_close.

    When calling remctl_open on an existing struct remctl object, send
    QUIT to the server if a connection is already open.

    remctld can be configured to pass the subcommand on standard input,
    but the documentation said this was not allowed.  Fix the
    documentation to match the implementation.

    Use PATH_KRB5_CONFIG as the environment variable to set the path to
    krb5-config rather than KRB5_CONFIG when running configure, since the
    latter is used by the Kerberos libraries to specify an alternative
    path to krb5.conf.

    Fix the Ruby bindings test suite to test against the newly-built
    libremctl and Ruby module rather than any installed on the system.

    Update to rra-c-util 3.10:

    * Add notices in each file copied from rra-c-util.
    * Prefer gssapi/gssapi.h to gssapi.h.
    * Include strings.h if it exists for strncasecmp on some platforms.
    * getaddrinfo replacement now portable to systems with bad netdb.h.
    * Avoid krb5-config if --with-gssapi-{include,lib} are given.
    * Add Windows implementation of fdflag_nonblocking.
    * The network_connect utility functions now take an optional timeout.
    * Wait longer for remctld to start in remctl tests.
    * Use an atexit handler to clean up after Kerberos tests.
    * Use typedef instead of #define for socklen_t and sig_atomic_t.
    * Stop providing or using INADDR_LOOPBACK for portability reasons.
    * Don't override a user's existing AFS tokens while testing.
    * Fix removal of -I/usr/include from GSS-API CPPFLAGS.
    * Provide ssize_t on platforms without it, such as Windows.
    * Fix vector_join and cvector_join with empty vectors.

    Update to C TAP Harness 1.8:

    * Add bmalloc, bcalloc, brealloc, and bstrdup TAP library functions.
    * Fix runtests to still honor SOURCE and -s without BUILD and -b.

You can download it from:

    <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/remctl/>

This package is maintained using Git; see the instructions on the above
page to access the Git repository.

Debian packages have been uploaded to Debian unstable.

Please let me know of any problems or feature requests not already listed
in the TODO file.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>