From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Jan 7 17:04:26 1999 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id RAA06194 for freebsd-chat-outgoing; Thu, 7 Jan 1999 17:04:26 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from smarter.than.nu (thought.calbbs.com [207.71.213.16]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id RAA06182 for ; Thu, 7 Jan 1999 17:04:24 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from brian@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by smarter.than.nu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id RAA35395; Thu, 7 Jan 1999 17:03:42 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from brian@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU) Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 17:03:41 -0800 (PST) From: "Brian W. Buchanan" X-Sender: brian@smarter.than.nu To: "Matthew N. Dodd" cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: A GUI administration tool for FreeBSD In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org 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 /, 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 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message