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From: john@xanth.cs.odu.edu (John Owens)
Newsgroups: comp.unix
Subject: Re: Trouble with comments in /etc/passwd, need advice...
Message-ID: <1121@mcdchg.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 16-Jul-87 12:38:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: mcdchg.1121
Posted: Thu Jul 16 12:38:36 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 18-Jul-87 07:58:57 EDT
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> What have other sites done to help their administrator(s) keep track of
> what "kinds" of users are authorized on the system?  -mod]

Well, Kyle Jones  wrote a wonderful program called
"mcp", which has been posted in comp.sources.unix.  For keeping track
of "kinds" of users, it uses groups in conjunction with "vigs",
"sigs", and "classes".  A "vig", a Very Important Group, is one where
membership in the group suffices to account for the user.  Examples
here are "staff" and "faculty".  Special Interest Groups and Classes
are, essentially, identical:

sig - an mcp abstraction with the following attributes:

    o   Name
    o   Expiration date (optional)
    o   Description

   Sigs are created using add-sig and users may  be  subsequently
   added  to  them  via  add-to-sig.   Sigs are not automatically
   deleted when they expire.  However  the  system  administrator
   can use mcp -c to report any expired sigs.

Users who are not in a vig, a sig, or a class are considered
"deadbeats".  There's lots more to it - take a look at the program.
We hardly even look at the passwd, group, and aliases files any
more....

-- 
John Owens		Old Dominion University - Norfolk, Virginia, USA
john@ODU.EDU		old arpa: john%odu.edu@RELAY.CS.NET
+1 804 440 4529		old uucp: {seismo,harvard,sun,hoptoad}!xanth!john