[Bug 535517] Re: netatalk fails to generate unique server signatures

[dmarks]

For the record: This bug was fixed with v2.1.0 --
https://sourceforge.net/p/netatalk/bugs/362/

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/535517

Title:
  netatalk fails to generate unique server signatures

Status in coreutils package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid
Status in eglibc package in Ubuntu:
  New
Status in glibc package in Ubuntu:
  New
Status in netatalk package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: netatalk

  Description:	Ubuntu 9.10
  Release:	9.10

  ii  netatalk
  2.0.4~beta2-5ubuntu2                                  AppleTalk user
  binaries

  NetATalk fails to generate a unique server signature. Analysis of
  client/server communication reveals that both NetATalk servers here
  report the signature 01017F0001017F0001017F0001017F00 . This confuses
  Mac clients, resulting in them apparently randomly directing AFP
  requests to one server or the other. Users will connect to SERVER1 and
  get a volume list from SERVER2 or vice versa.

  The netatalk code for generating server signatures
  (etc/afpd/status.c:191) uses the libc gethostid() call to obtain a
  32-bit unique identifier for the host.

  GNU Libc's man page for gethostid(3) notes that:

  "In the glibc implementation, the hostid is stored in the file /etc/hostid.  (In glibc versions before 2.2, the file /var/adm/hostid was used.)
  "In the glibc implementation, if gethostid() cannot open the file containing the host ID, then it obtains the hostname using gethostname(2), passes that hostname to gethostbyname_r(3)  in  order  to  obtain  the  host's  IPv4
         address, and returns a value obtained by bit-twiddling the IPv4 address.  (This value may not be unique.)"

  Ubuntu systems do not have any /etc/hostid by default, so glibc falls
  back on gethostbyname_r(3). However, Ubuntu systems' /etc/hosts files
  map the hostname to 127.0.0.1:

  127.0.0.1       localhost
  127.0.1.1       HOSTNAME.localnet        HOSTNAME

  so gethostbyname_r for the hostname in /etc/hostname will always
  return 127.0.0.1 . gethostid(3) will therefore always return the same
  value, and NetATalk's system id will always be the same on different
  Ubuntu hosts.

  WORKAROUND:

  To each line in your afpd.conf, append an
  explicit:

  -signature user:SERVERNAME

  (if you have more than one line in afpd.conf, make sure the signature is
  unique for each one).

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