scott@mcs-server.gac.edu (Scott Hess) (01/07/91)
In article <1990Jan6.234144.12011@sctc.com> herndon@sctc.com (William R. Herndon) writes:
I must be really out of date. Back when I used to do system
administration on systems running 4.2 BSD, all one needed to do
to get root access was:
su root
and viola, root priveleges. Well, it don't seem to work that way on
my new cube.
Your username must be a member of the wheel group. That is standard on
Unix systems (well, all that I've seen). To add yourself to the
wheel group, simply run UserManager, give it the root password, Open
the user you want to change, and add the wheel group. Fairly simple -
I've come to almost like UserManager. There's been only one thing I
think is strange about it (and many of the other programs like it that
request root password when they run) - why doesn't it honor the wheel
group security feature? My personal project management scheme is to
seperate projects into multiple logins (this is on my dorm room machine),
and log in as what I want to work on. Since I generally need to muck from
any of them, I want them all in the wheel group, but I always forget
(of course). So, once I'm logged in as the user and realize this, I can
run UserManager, and change it. That is nice, but probably shouldn't
be allowed. What is wheel for, after all . . .
machine show up in /etc/passwd, but I can live with this little mystery
until my larger problem is solved. I hate the idea of logging out,
logging in as root, doing the necessary work, logging out, logging in
under my user account, and continuing on my merry way.
NetInfo is a wonderous beastie. It's keeping all the info from passwd,
fstab, group, hosts, blah, blah, blah - almost all the Unix admin database
files, in other words - in a special place. Programs call netinfo to get
the data. This allows network-wide administration. For instance, at
Gustavus the machines are set up so that accounts are network-wide,
so people are not tied to a certain machine - their account "follows"
them around.
Of course, for a single-site "network", this is too much, but you get
to live with it anyhow. To access the netinfo database from the command
line, use nidump, niload, and niutil. For instance, saying
"nidump passwd . >/etc/passwd" fills up the passwd file with everything
that belongs there.
Any and all help is appreciated, and my apologies if this is a well
worn topic.
I have a strange feeling that this topic will only get more "worn" as time
goes on. It's not exactly obvious how NeXT's Unix works. Heck, the
various workstation magazines apparently couldn't figure it out during
their first reviews - where are the hordes of new neophites (sp?) going
to find out (not accusing you, or anyone of neophitism, just stating
an opinion :-).
--
scott hess scott@gac.edu
Independent NeXT Developer GAC Undergrad
<I still speak for nobody>
"Tried anarchy, once. Found it had too many constraints . . ."
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