LEICHTER-JERRY@YALE.ARPA (07/21/87)
I have an application which will run in a captive environment, aimed at
users who will mainly dial in on telephone lines, and who are quite a
distinct group from my vanilla VMS users. For all sorts of procedural
reasons, it would be nicest to have new users in this category dial in and
register themselves with the system. [I'd like to have new users log in
to a fixed name, register, then have them "convert over" to an account
created for them.]
Mr. Hamm then asks about ways to patch the job so that it appears to be run-
ning under some other account.
Doing this is not easy. There are several account-related fields, and you'd
have to be sure to patch all of them. The result would be highly likely to
break with new versions of VMS.
There's a much easier solution, that isn't based on anything unsupported:
Once you've created the new account, tell the user, "OK, the way you'll log in
from now on is .... Now we'll try it out:" Then do:
$ assign/user SYS$COMMAND SYS$INPUT
$ set host 0
$ <whatever>
Yes, the new user has to log in again - once, when he registers. The ruse of
"trying it out", however, will keep anyone from complaining about it - in
fact, most people will probably appreciate the opportunity to see ahead of
time what they should expect. Further, at <whatever> you can ask the new user
if all went well with the session, and if not give him help until he IS
successful in logging in - rather than leave him scratching his head the
next time he tries out his new account and finds that he got the password
recorded wrong, or whatever.
-- Jerry
-------CADS_COLE@GALLUA.BITNET (Kevin Cole; Gallaudet U.; Washington; DC) (07/23/87)
To whomever asked (sorry I forgot): Do these folks need seperate and distinct directories (as opposed to sub- directories all under the same owner)? I'm certainly no VAX wizard, but the way my own account is set up offers a possible solution. The computer center here set up one directory/UIC for the entire department. But when we login, we all use different usernames. The system then dumps us into our own little sub-directory and runs our own LOGIN.COM. For all intents and purposes, we are seperate entities, but we cannot protect files from one another. We each have a MAIL.MAI file and can send messages to one another just like normal users... I don't know how it's done, but I suspect it of being nothing out of the ordinary. Am I missing something? Are there pitfalls here? Or doesn't it apply in your situation? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kevin Cole <Flatline> KJCOLE@GALLUA.BITNET Center for Assessment and Demographic Studies (CADS) CADS_COLE@GALLUA.BITNET Gallaudet Research Institute (GRI) Gallaudet University Washington, D.C. 20002 (202) 651-5575