On Tue, Sep 05, 2006 at 12:04:07PM -0500, Mark Holden wrote, and it was 
proclaimed:
> I forgot to mention that we're using RHEL AS3 (currently at update 8)
> and RHEL AS4 (currently at update 4). Does scponly support these
> distributions? 
> 
> From a quick read of the scponly web page:
> 
> - it seems to indiate that SFTP will work as well--is that actually the
> case?

Yes, I use it for many clients to have secured file-only access via SFTP
client software.

> 
> - it appears to require a chroot'd environment. If this is the case,
> then I assume that the target dropbox will have to be in that users's
> chroot'd environment. If so, then I assume it would make sense to
> replace the global dropbox that the rest of the system/users use to be a
> symbolic link to the dropbox in that user's chroot'd environment (so
> they don't have to see the gory details of chroot'd environments).

It doesn't require a chroot. It offers a chroot as an option. Basically,
this means that chdir(..) will only be possible inside the chroot and 
only internal symlinks will be awarded. You don't need to run any 

> 
> - I assume this would be a patched to the openssh package? Or is it
> simply installing the scponly shell on the system and pointing that user
> id at that shell in /etc/passwd?

Not a patch. It is a user's shell, simply use it instead of /bin/nologin or
/bin/bash. 

The SSH "sftp" protocol effectively logs in the user using:
bash$ ssh [EMAIL PROTECTED] sftp-server
(though there are a few other details)

That basically does a "remote execute" of "sftp-server" on the remote host,
and connects your stdin to its stdin, and its stdout to your stdout.

You can generally run any command on a remote machine in this fashion:
bash$ ssh [EMAIL PROTECTED] top

So its nothing really special to just make a drop-in replacement for a
shell that will only allow sftp-server and scp to be run, while disallowing
everything else. I actually crafted a similar "restricted shell tool" for
rsync-over-ssh, which uses effectively the same principle.

> 
> I'm busied out with another deliverable at the moment, so will dig
> deeper into what you mention below in the next coupld of days
> (hopefully).
> 
> By the way, the pizzashack reference seems to indicate that there are
> security risks, so that concerns me. Does "scponly" have security risks
> as well?

Never heard of the pizzashack thing until recently, scponly is in Gentoo
portage... also FreeBSD ports has it, and it seems widely accepted.

> 
> Thanks!
> Mark
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Benjamin Donnachie [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> Sent: Tuesday, September 05, 2006 11:53 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Cc: Holden, Mark (RICH1:B670)
> Subject: Re: openssh: Enabling sftp, but disabling ssh?
> 
> 
> Mark Holden wrote:
> > Does anybody know if it's possible, using openssh, to allow file 
> > transfer to/from a machine, using sftp, for a specific userid, and 
> > disallow ssh login/remote command execution for that same userid? 
> > Other userids on the machine should be unaffected.
> 
> I do exactly that on my system; you can't achieve it with OpenSSH alone
> and need to use a helper allocation such as either scponly[1] or
> rssh[2].
> 
> Ben
> 
> [1] http://www.sublimation.org/scponly/
> [2] http://www.pizzashack.org/rssh/

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