proxy login Ids

[sreekant sreekantham]

Say I have a user Id (master) through which I have read, write and execute permisssions on a specific directory.

I would like to create say 5 unique user Ids (peer1, peer2..) with their own passwords etc, but when these users log in, they should login as 'master' internally without their knowledge and have all the previleges that the master would have. Is this possible and if so, how can I achieve this. BR.

[Tom Geudens]

Hi,
This would depend on how exactly these users are going to log in. Say they are connecting from their Windows NT workstations and only need access to that specific directory, you could use Samba (and create a directory mapping) to accomplish this. If they actually need access to the Unix server (in order to execute commands) you could use a tool like sudo to accomplish it (http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/)

As you can see ... it all depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

Regards,
Tom Geudens

[Michael Tully]

Hi,

You can get already compiled versions from the HP porting centre:

http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Sysadmin/sudo-1.6.2b1/

[Deepak Extross]

How about using the concept of Unix groups to achieve this?
Define a group 'mygroup', and assign all these users 'master'. 'peer1', 'peer2', etc. to the group 'mygroup'.
Grant all permissions on the directory to the group (chmod g+w,g+r,g+x).
This way, all the users will have full access to the directory, irrespective of their login-id.

[sreekant sreekantham]

I forgot to add an important aspect in this. There is a restriction on the master user, if this user is logged in, there cannot be another session with the same login. The reason behind this requirement is, Master user has access to specific functions which update some important config files.

I would like the users peer1,peer2 do the same but without realising that they are updating the config files.

[Tom Geudens]

Hi,
Ok, so your users need to execute commands on the server as user "master". I would definitely go for sudo then. You can even limit WHICH commands they can execute as "master".
Your second requirement is tricky though. I know of no way to limit the number of people that login as a specific user (yes, I know one ... make sure that only one person has the password :-). But maybe someone else does ...

Hope this helps,
Tom Geudens

[Deepak Extross]

Regarding your first requirement, you could either use sudo or set the user-id bit on in the executables which would do the work.
chmod u+s

Regarding your second requirement, you could add a small check in the .profile of the peers to check if master is logged in.

HTH