[Samba] SWAT Won't Start - Alarm Clock

[Bit]

Ryan Novosielski wrote:
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> Michael Heydon wrote:
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>> Bit wrote:
>>     
>>> Hey everyone,
>>>
>>> If anyone could help me with this problem, I'd greatly appreciate it.
>>>
>>> Whenever I try to start swat (from the command-line by invoking
>>> /usr/sbin/swat), it sits there for a very long time as if it's
>>> running, but any attempt to use telnet to the port or point my browser
>>> at it results in nothing, as if swat were just not running. 
>>> Firewalling is no issue, I've disabled it.  Swat ultimately dies after
>>> a few minutes giving no output to the console other than "Alarm
>>> clock".  What does this error message mean?
>>>
>>> I've tried running swat with -d 10 and "strace /usr/sbin/swat -o
>>> myfile" hoping that the output will mean more to someone else than it
>>> does to me.  I've seen other people with this problem googling around,
>>> but no solution, and I can't seem to figure it out on my own.
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance for the help,
>>> bit
>>>
>>> <snip>
>>>       
>> It's been a while since I last used swat so this may have changed, but
>> back in the day swat didn't handle its own network stuff. Have you tried
>> adding swat to your *inetd config (assuming you have one). If you don't
>> have any form of inetd running, maybe it would be possible to hack
>> something together using netcat (obviously not a good idea for a
>> production environment)?
>>     
>
> I've only ever run swat through inetd, myself.
>
>
>   
Thanks for the help guys.  Sounds like this is exactly my problem.  I'm 
starting swat directly by invoking /usr/sbin/swat, there is no valid 
xinetd configuration file for it so it's not starting via xinetd.  I 
just found this in the Samba documentation...

"SWAT should be installed to run via the network super-daemon. Depending 
on which system your UNIX/Linux system has, you will have either an 
|inetd|- or |xinetd|-based system."
http://samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-HOWTO-Collection/SWAT.html#xinetd

I'll try starting it via xinetd and post my results for posterity.

I didn't think this would really matter though.  This raises other 
questions for me.

1)  I don't get it.  Why does swat have to be launched via xinetd?

2)  I've never used xinetd much, but I always imagined it working as a 
wrapper around any normal client/server architecture-based service.  Is 
that not the right way to think about it?  Do you have to make a 
conscious choice to code your program appropriately to be launched via 
xinetd?

Thanks again,
bit