Account Administration
From SEDSWiki
Contents |
Overview
Accounts on SEDS are most easily administered using the Apple Server "Workgroup Manager". This can be run from any Mac, or alternatively, by connecting to the SEDS server via VNC and running it on the server directly.
Note that only (LDAP) administrators can create accounts. You will know if you are or who to contact to gain this privilege.
Launching the Workgroup Manager
Remotely, it will take some time for it to load all the account information before the GUI becomes responsive again.
Adding a group
While it may not make sense to start with "add a group", if you're creating an account for a person for a new SEDS chapter web page, you should create a new group for that chapter first. This way, if multiple people need access to edit web pages, etc, you just need to add future users to the same group.
Click on the "Groups" icon in the panel of four icons in the upper left of the gui (it looks like the shadow of three people). A list of groups will come up on the left, and the right will allow you to enter a new group. Click on the "New Group" plus-sign button to add a new group.
Under "Name", type in a full-length name for the group, and a short (8 character or less) name of the group which will show up on the UNIX command line. An unused group ID will be chosen for you automatically, unless you want to specify one.
If you want to add existing users to this group, click the "plus" sign next to the members box and drag them in.
Click save when you're done with your group.
Adding a user
Click on the "Users" icon in the panel of four icons in the upper left of the gui (it looks like the shadow of a single person). Click on the New User plus sign. Again, this may take some time to appear when running the GUI remotely. It will come up with the next available user ID, and you're ready to create an account.
Select an applicable "Preset" from the bottom of the GUI. This will set default mail settings, quotas, shells, home directory, password expiration, etc.
Basic
On this tab you can enter the users full name, the login (short) name, and password. The short name will typically be filled in automatically based on the full name, but you're free to change it. For most users, only the "access account" box should be checked.
For user name, it is suggested to put their affiliation (SEDS-Earth, chapter, SEDS-USA, etc) in parenthesis after their name. This will help administrators keep track of who is from where.
Advanced
The defaults on this page are OK. You can use the "Options" button to set a password expiration date, or force the user to change their password at next login. In generally, we should try to "expire" accounts on SEDS so that we know how is active.
Groups
Pick an appropriate group as the primary group for the person. Click on the "Groups" tab, and either type in the group if you know it, or click the "plus" sign to add from a list. Once the list of existing groups comes up, you can drag from this list either to the "Name" field to set it as the primary group, or the "other groups" box to add multiple groups for a user.
Home
On this tab you can set the users home directory. This one is a little finicky -- it won't always create the home directory for you (ie, /Users/username). For those who are only using the account to main a website, its good set to set their home directory to parent of the HTML directory (ie, /web/seds/illinois). Quotas should be set to 50MB initially.
For example, to set a user to have the home directory "/web/seds/earth", Click on the "Pencil"/edit button, and type in "/web/seds/earth" in the bottom "Home:" box and click OK.
Make sure the "Home:" listed at the top of this tab is what you expect.
Set it to "enabled" with a mail quota of 50MB initially. The rest of the defaults are fine.
Print Quota
(Not used)
Info
Fill in what you want here. Eventually it would be nice to use an LDAP directory for all SEDS members, and their contact info would be here. Someday...
Windows
(Not Used)
Inspector
Don't touch this unless you need to change some particular field -- for advanced users only.
Create the account
When you've set everything up, go back to the "Basic" tab and click save. This should create the new account. Email the user their info, and ask them to change their password ASAP.
Editing Users
Editing users is similar to creating them. This is typically done to reset passwords, change or add group affiliations, un-expire accounts, or increase quotas.
