Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 17:03:41 -0800 (PST) From: "Brian W. Buchanan" <brian@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU> To: "Matthew N. Dodd" <winter@jurai.net> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: A GUI administration tool for FreeBSD Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9901071657190.32166-100000@smarter.than.nu> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.02.9901071822320.8926-100000@sasami.jurai.net>
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On Thu, 7 Jan 1999, Matthew N. Dodd wrote:
> Take for example, the password file. Do you present a simple interface
> for adding users? How do groups fit into the tool? Quotas? Login
> limits? Authentication? One might punt and only present a 1:1 inteface
> to /etc/master.passwd, ignoring the others and relegating their
> configuraitons to other interfaces. For a new user, this sort of GUI may
> be worse than no GUI at all.
I've been thinking along the same line... The average FreeBSD newbie would
wonder something along the lines of, "GECOS field? WTF is GECOS?" My
goal is to present a unified interface to configuring the system with
things organized in a logical manner. My user editor presently
automatically suggests a new UID, can automatically create a new group for
each user if desired, and automatically fills in the the home directory
with a default of <default homedir root>/<username>, and all of these
behaviors are, of course, overridable if the sysadmin so desires -- the
application /suggests/, rather than /insists/, as Windows likes to do. :)
Unfortunately, this still makes it all too easy for a newbie to shoot
himself in the foot by sticking new users in wheel, setting their UIDs to
0, giving them bogus shells, deleting root, etc. :) I'm pondering a
"Beginner Mode" which would prevent the admin from doing stuff like this
until he declared "I know what I'm doing, damnit" and turned it off.
--
Brian Buchanan brian@smarter.than.nu
brian@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
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