[6206] in Kerberos
Re: Why TELNET sends arbitrary environment variables at all?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lex Spoon)
Sat Nov 11 01:20:10 1995
To: kerberos@MIT.EDU
Date: 11 Nov 1995 05:00:31 GMT
From: lex@chaos.holmes.clemson.edu (Lex Spoon)
Mario Klebsch DG1AM (mkl@rob.cs.tu-bs.de) wrote:
[quotes snipped]
: Passing of environment in telnet is somwhat problematic. XAUTHORITY is
: a good example. It contains a filename. It only makes sense to
: transfer this environment variable when the new host also has access
: to this file under the same path. DISPLAY can only be used on the new
: host, when it still refers the same display. Display often contains
: unix:0. Its absolute nonsense to forward this DISPLAY to a remote
: machine. DISPLAY often does not contain a FQDN (full qualified domain
: name). When I login into a system in another domain, my DISPLAY
: becomes useless.
: OTOH the forwarding of the environment often can solve common
: problems. telnet is often used in cases, where forwarding of the
: environment can be usefull.
: But I think, this aproach is too simple. I think, it should be
: modified in a way that the user can specify what to forward and what
: not to forward on a host by host (and login by login) basis. There
: should be a possibility to modify (canonicalize DISPLAY) environment
: variables.
Actually, there is no reason to say that the environment that is
"forwarded" is the same as the environment the telnet client
starts up with. Your telnet could automatically canonicalize
DISPLAY before forwarding it and, say, convert XAUTHORITY
to an AFS-based filename.
Lex
