[Summary] Account Manager and DU 4.0b jumbo patches

From: Oyanarte Portilho <portilho_at_fis.unb.br>
Date: Fri, 07 Aug 1998 18:52:11 -0300

Hi Gurus,

Many thanks to

"Fred Cassirer" <fvc_at_unx.dec.com>
"Gano, Dag" <dgano_at_ss.ca.gov>

Fred has sent broad comments on the "dop" command that precedes
dxaccounts, that is behind the Account Manager icon in DailyAdmin.
In short, what I had to do was

1) remove the /etc/.AM_is_running file that was locking /usr/bin/X11/dxaccounts.

2) edit /usr/dt/appconfig/types/C/dailyadmin_sm.dt, changing the line

           EXEC_STRING /usr/sbin/dop -n /usr/bin/X11/dxaccounts

   to

           EXEC_STRING /usr/bin/X11/dxaccounts

and now it is working fine.

        Oyanarte Portilho
        Institute of Physics
        University of Brasilia, Brazil

**************************************************************************

The original post was:

I have installed most of the DU 4.0b jumbo patches and after that the
Account Manager window on CDE is giving the following message:

/usr/bin/X11/dxaccounts can be run as root (privileged), provided
additional features.

There are two buttons "Run as Root" but none of them works. Before
the patch installation we had no problem. Any ideas?

and Fred's replies were:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Before you installed the patch, were you always
getting prompted for the root password, or, were
you simply launching dxaccounts and it would run
with root permissions?

The reason I ask is that if you haven't been seeing
the password prompt dialog someone may have
set up your /etc/doprc file to allow privileged
launch of dxaccounts.

Try the following:

>From a non-root terminal window:

$ dop dxaccounts

It should prompt you if you want to run as root or as your
current login.

>From a root prompt:

# dop -n dxaccounts

It should ask you if you want to "run as root" or "run as root".
The V4.* version of dop doesn't suppress the redundant
prompt, either one should work the same.

If you enter:

# dop dxaccounts

It should just run with no questions asked.

The -n variation is what is being used in the CDE rule to
launch dxaccounts from the CDE desktop.

If you want to suppress this, you can change the rule
by making a local copy in your environment. (see the
CDE docs for how to do this, dtaction I believe)

You can also use dop to launch a root based action
for a specific user (or set of users) without asking for
a password. To do this, edit /etc/doprc and where it
says:

global_admin {
      { users { root }}

Change it to
      { users { root otheruser}}

Where otheruser is a trusted admin user id who can now
launch *all* sysman commands as root from their
local login without getting prompted.

To do this for specific actions simply add the "{users { }}}"
clause to the specific action further down the file.

If you do this be aware that you are providing root access
to anyone with this user id. Also be aware that this file
format will change in the future and you may/will need to
make some similar changes when you upgrade to the
next release.

-Fred Cassirer

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

>Fred,

>Thanks for your attention.

>>> From a root prompt:
>>> # dop -n dxaccounts
>>>
>>> it should ask you if you want to "run as root" or "run as root".
>>> the V4.* version of dop doesn't suppress the redundant
>>> Prompt, either one should work the same.
>>>
>>> If you enter:
>>>
>>> # dop dxaccounts
>>>
>>> It should just run with no questions asked.

>I have tried both dop command versions as root and in both of them I get
>stuck with the following message:

> The password and group files are currently locked by another user.
> Please try again later.
>However nobody is running dxaccounts right now. So, why is it locked?

Ok, this looks like there was some kind of problem when you were running
dxaccounts and it was interrupted (system panic?) leaving the lock files
around. Look for the following file:

/etc/.AM_is_running


If it exists, remove it.


>>> Before you installed the patch, were you always
>>> getting prompted for the root password, or, were
>>> you simply launching dxaccounts and it would run
>>> with root permissions?

>Nope, I have never been prompted for the root password since I have
>always used it after login as root. I would be pleased if you could
>give me more pointers.

Were you using dop or just running dxaccounts directly from the
command line? You use "dop" everytime you invoke one of the
SysMan tools from the CDE desktop via the icons. If you
run it directly at a command prompt, you'll never see the password
prompt.

I'd like to make sure you haven't changed your method for
invoking dxaccounts, i.e., switched to using the icon instead
of a direct launch from a root prompt.

As I mentioned in my previous mail, if you simply don't want the
prompt behavior when launching as root from the CDE dxaccounts
icon, you can create a local copy of that CDE rule and remove the
"-n" or even the "dop -n" from the execution line.

The CDE rule for this file can be found at:

/usr/dt/appconfig/types/C/dailyadmin_sm.dt

Inside look for the ACTION Dxaccounts and notice the
EXEC_STRING. You can create a local ACTION called
Dxaccounts which will override this one, you would change
your EXEC_STRING to simply /usr/bin/X11/dxaccounts
since it would be local to the root session it would always
launch as root.

This wouldn't work for a non-root user as dxaccounts would
only be launched with that users privileges (read only mode).

Again, this workaround is simply to avoid the dop prompt,
future updates to dop will simply launch the application if
the original user is root so this won't be a problem.

-FredC
Received on Fri Aug 07 1998 - 21:52:19 NZST

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