SUMMARY: Anyone running etherman on Solaris 2.5?

From: Bryan Hodgson (bryanh@astea.com)
Date: Fri Aug 29 1997 - 16:36:40 CDT


Well, that problem seems to have been solved. Thanks to all who
responded! The number of responses was overwhelming, and generally
everyone had the same answer ...

My problem was with finding libraries to run etherman .. An abbreviated copy
of my original post is at the end.

There were two issues:

  1.) LD_LIBRARY_PATH needs to be present in the environment, and
      pointing to at least /usr/openwin/lib.

  2.) There are a number of libraries that need symlinks:

      libX11.so.5 -> /usr/openwin/lib/libX11.so
      libXaw.so.5 -> /usr/openwin/lib/libXaw.so
      libXext.so.5 -> /usr/openwin/lib/libXext.so
      libXmu.so.5 -> /usr/openwin/lib/libXmu.so
      libXt.so.5 -> /usr/openwin/lib/libXt.so

Mike Sullivan provided an especially elegant and helpful response that
pretty much nailed the topic. He said, in part:

-----------

The softlinks should be created in a dedicated directory that won't
affect any other programs. Secondly the netman programs require the
LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable to be set to tell them where to
find the symbolic links to the libraries, but again you don't want to
put that setting in your normal environment since that, may mess up
other programs. The solution is to create shell script wrappers for each
of the netman commands.

I have the various netman programs installed in their own directory
hierarchy under /opt/netman, with a subdirectory for each program and
any associated files. I added two additional subdirectories to the
hierarchy: libkludge, which contains the extra symbolic links for the
libraries; and bin, which contains the shell script wrappers. The
attached tar file contains those two directories. Extract it from
/opt/netman (or your equivalent). Here's what it should like like
afterwards:

rwxr-sr-x bin/
rwxr-xr-x bin/etherman
rwxr-xr-x bin/interman
rwxr-xr-x bin/packetman
rwxr-xr-x bin/analyser
rwxr-xr-x libkludge/
rwxrwxrwx libkludge/libXaw.so.5 symbolic link to /usr/openwin/lib/libXaw.so
rwxrwxrwx libkludge/libXmu.so.5 symbolic link to /usr/openwin/lib/libXmu.so
rwxrwxrwx libkludge/libXt.so.5 symbolic link to /usr/openwin/lib/libXt.so
rwxrwxrwx libkludge/libXext.so.5 symbolic link to /usr/openwin/lib/libXext.so
rwxrwxrwx libkludge/libX11.so.5 symbolic link to /usr/openwin/lib/libX11.so

-----------

The scripts are straight-forward enough. The etherman and packetman
scripts follow, for reference:

#!/bin/ksh
# wrapper for etherman command
# 1995-11-27 11:46 mike@trdlnk.com
#
NETMAN=/opt/netman
ETHERMAN=$NETMAN/etherman-1.1a
export HFONTLIB=$NETMAN/hershey

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/openwin/lib

$ETHERMAN/etherman \
        -xrm "Etherman.manfCodes: $ETHERMAN/manf.codes" \
        "$@"

#!/bin/ksh
# wrapper for packetman command
# 1995-11-27 12:39 mike@trdlnk.com
#
NETMAN=/opt/netman
PACKETMAN=$NETMAN/packetman-1.2

ethers=/tmp/ethers$$
passwd=/tmp/passwd$$
group=/tmp/group$$
appres=/tmp/appres$$
trap "rm -f $ethers $passwd $group $appres" EXIT

rm -f $ethers $passwd $group $appres
ypcat ethers > $ethers
(cat /etc/passwd; ypcat passwd) > $passwd
(cat /etc/group; ypcat group) > $group

# although packetman claims to take a -xrm option, it always gives an error,
# so use this round about method to set the resources:
sed -e '/^Packetman.ethersFile:/s|:.*$|: '"$ethers|" \
    -e '/^Packetman.passwdFile:/s|:.*$|: '"$passwd|" \
    -e '/^Packetman.groupFile:/s|:.*$|: '"$group|" \
        $PACKETMAN/Packetman.ad > $appres
export XFILESEARCHPATH=$appres:${XFILESEARCHPATH}

$PACKETMAN/packetman "$@"

------------

Cathy Hargrave pointed out (correctly) that the writers haven't compiled the
program since Solaris 2.3, and (less correctly) that they won't work under
2.5.1. I've seen meaningful / useful results from packetman and interman.
etherman fires up it's display and then core dumps; I was having similar
problems with packetman until I twiddled with the configuration files, so my
problem with etherman may be able to be resolved (as Mike did in the
packetman script, above).

Not that anyone asked for a review <g>, but from what I've seen of these
programs so far (limited) leads me to conclude:

1. Useful and interesting (or, if you prefer, interesting and useful).
2. Can be resource hogs .. definitely capable of taking over my Ultra 170.
3. Nice, but not commercial-grade software.
4. I wonder if running them under a correct version of the OS would make
   a difference ...

My thanks to all who offered advice and suggestions:

    Sean Ward <seanw@amgen.com>
    "D461-Viet_Q_Hoang(0)82572" <vqh@dwrock.dw.lucent.com>
    Matthew Stier <Matthew.Stier@tddny.fujitsu.com>
    Joel Lee <jlee@thomas.com>
    Troy Kittrell <troyk@basspro.com>
    Michael Sullivan <mike@trdlnk.com>
    Jason Marshall <jasonm@vsl.com>
    Kris Briscoe <brisco_k@adm-srv.sat.mot.com>
    "Kevin P. Inscoe" <kpi@crc.com>
    Mark Allen <mallen@bcyellowpages.com>
    Tim Carlson <tim@santafe.edu>
    Philip Plane <philip@edpssv07.ird.govt.nz>
    "K.Ravi" <RAVKRISH.IN.oracle.com.ofcmail@in.oracle.com>
    Casper Dik <casper@holland.Sun.COM>
    Line Printer <lps@rahul.net>
    Tim Henrion <henriont@datrep.safb.af.mil>
    The Late Ian Angles <ia@spey.st-andrews.ac.uk>
    "Rodney C. Marable" <marable@firefly.net>
    Cathy Hargrave <cathy@stm.com>
    "David L. Markowitz" <David.Markowitz@litronic.com>
    Glenn Satchell - Uniq Professional Services
    David Robson <robbo@box.net.au>

-------------- Original message follows.

After seeing references elsewhere to etherman (part of the "netman"
package distributed at ftp://ftp.cs.curtin.edu.au/pub/), I thought I'd try
it on our new Solaris 2.5.1 machine.

It's not starting due to X library errors, and I don't understand
enough about X (or shared libraries) to fix the problem.

One of the README files at the ftp site says, in part ..

        - If you do not have X11R5 shared libraries on your system (OW is
          X11R4 based), then you'll need to symlink the OW libraries. Eg:

          ln -s /usr/openwin/lib/libXmu.so.4 /usr/<??>/lib/libXmu.so.5
          etc...

Perhaps it's the etc... that's getting me. When I try to start etherman
from either CDE or OpenWindows desktops (as root), I get back:

# ./etherman
ld.so.1: ./etherman: fatal: libXaw.so.5: can't open file: errno=2
Killed
#

libXaw.so.5 is present at /usr/openwin/lib. I soft-linked it at
/usr/dt/lib, and that did not correct the problem.

The entire X-environment is the out-of-the box installation; we've made
no customizations.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. I've included what I thought might
be relevant parts of `set` output from a CDE session below.

------- end of transmission



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