[distcc] distccd, --allow, and /etc/init.d

[Daniel Kegel]

The --allow option is now mandatory for distcc's daemon mode.
This is a good thing; I hate letting somebody else's
Aunt Tilly have the ability to run processes on my box :-)

But it presents a challenge for those packaging
distccd up as an rpm.  The rpm comes with an /etc/init.d script
to start up daemon mode.   Now, I could require the person
installing the rpm to edit that script and put in the
right argument for --allow, but that's not going to go
over well for my users.

I'd love to do some sed hackery on the output of ifconfig
to come up with a value of --allow that allows connections
from any network the server is directly connected to,
but that's not always enough in my case.

I think what I'm going to do is have the init script read
/etc/distccd.allow to get the list of networks to pass to --allow.
The format will be simple:
  ipadr/size
  ipadr/size
  ...
so it's easy for networks ops people (who would not enjoy
editing /etc/init.d/distccd) to maintain.

Comments?  Anyone else done this before?