BOFH-style excuse server - RPMs for Linux

Do you like the BOFH-style excuse server, at http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ballard/bofh/ ? Did you want to run one yourself? There are a number of ways to do it, but RPM makes it easy. Just download the RPM below, and you'll have your own excuse server!

Download

BOFH server RPMs
"Binary" installation RPM (all architectures)	bofh-server-0.2-1.noarch.rpm
Source RPM	bofh-server-0.2-1.src.rpm
These RPMs have been tested with Red Hat Linux 7.3, 8.0, and 9. However, they should work without modification on any other RPM-based distro with xinetd, such as Mandrake 8.2 or 9. If you don't have xinetd, you'll need to configure inetd manually.

Installation

Download and install the installation ("binary") RPM.
Enable the service -- under Red Hat, "chkconfig bofh on" should work. Or edit /etc/xinetd.d/bofh and set disable=no.
If you want to use a port other than the default 666, you can edit /etc/xinetd.d/bofh.
Restart xinetd ("service xinetd restart" under Red Hat Linux, for example).
If necessary, adjust your firewall rules to open port 666 (or whatever port you used).
Edit the excuse file if you want! (/usr/share/bofh-server/excuses)

Operation

Just telnet to your server, on port 666, and you'll get an excuse!

You may want to update the excuse file occassionally... get the latest at http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ballard/bofh/.

Note: this program is for amusement purposes only. It has not been tested for security holes etc. But since it takes no user input and runs as nobody, there's little damage that can be done.

Credits

Jeff Ballard (ballard@NOSPAMcs.wisc.edu) wrote the program and collects the excuses -- see http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ballard/bofh/
Jeremy Portzer (jeremy@trilug.org) made the RPMs.

Last updated Wed, July 23, 2003