Re: [cobalt-users] admin / ftp / pico

[Diana Brake <diana@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 02:13 PM 9/4/00 -0400, Tim wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> At great peril I decided to telnet in to my server as su - and use pico to
> adjust the group file so admin was not a member of every site on my server.
>
> the lines read...
> site23:x:134:admin;ovitinc
> so I deleted the offending admin and semi colon to read
> site23:x:134:ovitinc
> hit control x, and saved the changes, and looked to confirm the changes.

This will work but the only ID that can access that site is now ovitinc. If 
you want access and you are not also ovitinc, then your access will depend 
on you knowing the password, which if changed by ovitinc, locks you 
out....(realizing server admin can override userIDs...but you go changing 
others' passwords and they may get mad/frustrated.

I have my own (multiple )admin ID's that I place in these site#:x:# lines 
just so I can have separate access. The cobalt default admin user has been 
taken out of every site line so I'm not in danger of running into the 32 
group limit for admin now. All the siteadmins that are mine personally are 
limited to 25 sites each.


> I have three questions...
> 1. One of the lines in group reads...
> site-adm:x:111:admin,cnewell,otrveye...etc. listing all of the usernames on
> the server. Do I need to make any changes to this line? Or, is this the line
> I was supposed to edit instead of each individual site line?

no, this line is a listing of all the valid siteadmins on the 
server...admin is just one of those.



> 2. Since then everything seems to be running  r e a l l y  s l o w  and I am
> still denied access. Do I need to re-start anything for these changes to
> take effect? .

If editing the group file was the last thing you did then something you did 
may definitely be suspect. But, I've never had a problem after editing 
mine. Note though, the group and group- files must be identical and if you 
didn't also change group-, then there may be a reason for the slowdown. I 
always " cp group group- " when I'm finished editing the group file.



> 3. I read somewhere, after the fact, in a CGI message board...
> 'If you use pico, you should become used to calling it with the -w option
> (type : pico -w filename) to disable word-wrap. You could mess up scripts
> that don`t tolerate word wrap in command sequences.' Does this apply to
> editing the group file?

Yes..the word wrap will definitely break access, and the line I find that 
gets broken is the site-adm:x:111: line you reference above. I found that 
access was broken for every user "after" the broken ID. You can tell it's 
broken because the second/third lines will start with a partial ID. When 
intact, this line will continue off the screen with a $ symbol at the edge. 
Important Note: This line on my server wraps multiple times even with the 
-w switch when I open Pico. I just reconnect the lines "every" time I edit 
the file...no big deal.


HTH,
Diana