flint@gistdev.UUCP (05/20/89)
In the "what I'd really like to see" department, would be to get rid of the one-level username system we have, and go to a hierarchial username system. (For example, instead of being identified as "joe", a user might be identified as admin/acct/joe if Joe was in the Administration Department, Accounting Section of the company. If there was another Joe doing working in customer support, he'd be ops/cs/joe (for Operations/Customer Support/Joe) There would be many passwd files, not just one: and many advantages would result. Search time through an excessively long passwd file would be a lot less, a login name wouldn't have to be unique system-wide, the whole system wouldn't die if the passwd file got corrupted (you'd be able to switch to a different group and log in and fix it), etc. Of course, doing this would create a lot of compatibility problems, but I think there are probably answers to them. It would still be useful to have a single number correspond to a single user. (to maintain compatibility with the file system, and also so that a single user could be in multiple groups at once.)
flint@gistdev.UUCP (05/23/89)
/* Written 12:05 pm May 22, 1989 by harald.ruc.dk!d.jba in gistdev:comp.bugs.sys5 */
What prevents you from creating usernames like that (or admin.acct.joe) ?
d.jba works fine for me.
- I want the hierarchy, not the more complex names: unfortunately, I don't
- know any good alternatives to the longer names. If everybody belongs to
- a group, what's wrong with asking them to tell you which group it is when
- they login? Hypothetical situtation: I would like to have 3 different
- groups of users on the machine, and I want to have one person from each of
- those groups responsible for login management of each group. However, I
- don't want the manager of group A to be able to screw up the logins of
- people in group B.
How often do you actually have to search the passwd file?
- Try putting 5K names in your password file for a day. Linear searches are
- a lot of fun, and you search the file more than you think.
Don't you keep a copy of passwd.old around?
- Yes, so? When you can't login, you have to screw around in order to
- put it back. Most importantly, this one file getting corrupted makes
- the whole system unuseable, and 100 users are sitting on their hands,
- as opposed to just 10 people from one group.
Flint Pellett, Global Information Systems Technology, Inc.
1800 Woodfield Drive, Savoy, IL 61874 (217) 352-1165
INTERNET: flint%gistdev@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu
UUCP: {uunet,pur-ee,convex}!uiucuxc!gistdev!flint