Re: [cobalt-users] user problem

[Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 04:14 PM 2/17/00 +0011, you wrote:

> does the raq2 still use a single password file for all domains as the raq1's
> did?

Of course.  This is, after all, an implementation of Linux, which can only 
have one user per username per machine.

> The fact that I can't set up the same user names under different domains is
> rather annoying.

Two ways around this I can think of:  buy multiple machines, or use virtual 
machine software.

But what we, and a lot of other hosting companies, do, is we divorce the 
concept of linux "user" from the concept of "email" user or 
"hosting-client" user.  For example, all our email mailboxes would get an 
account named something like emc10001, emc10002, etc., while all our 
websites would get something like wsc10001, wsc10002.  Then we'd have an 
account table:  <www.joesfabulousstuff.com> would be customer 555-555-1212 
(his main phone number), while the services he'd have would be emc10345, 
emc10346, emc10358, wsc10234, and ftp10071, or in other words, three email 
boxes, one website and one anonymous ftp site.  Of course the RaQ's gui 
interface doesn't allow us to easily implement this model.  That's why I 
run into so many problems with the RaQ gui interface.

The easy way out on the RaQ, and the way WE do it on the RaQ, is for us to 
assign all usernames, and to use a code system.  For example: car10035 for 
the 35th account set up on system car1.  No one at the customer site gets 
admin privileges; insted we create all the users for the site, using codes 
such as car10035 for the username (we get them out of a table, so we know 
we won't be trying a duplicate).  One of them (usually the "catchall" 
account) gets his personal directory changed (we do this in the 
"/etc/passwd" file, not in the gui) to point to the "site" directory rather 
than his own.

I know this isn't what you've wanted to hear; I hope, however, that it 
points you towards a usable, if less than satisfactory, solution.

Jeff
--
Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>