@chapter(Accounts) @section(If You Are a User) If you don't already have an Athena account, you should get one @i(first). Athena will give accounts to: @itemize[any undergraduate a graduate taking an Athena-sponsored course anybody working on an Athena development project any full-time MIT faculty member] Call the Athena Accounts Administrator at (25)3-1325 for details on how to get an Athena account. You take the trouble to get an "Athena account" first because then you will be known to the whole Athena system, @i(not just the individual workstation). With an Athena account, you will have a username on one or more timesharing systems, you can transfer files, and you can send and receive mail. Also, you get the Athena account @i(first) so that any account made subsequently on that workstation (or anywhere else) is cloned from the Athena account and therefore recognized by the Athena network. Once you have the Athena account, go to whomever is acting as the local site system manager (anybody with "root" privileges). Tell them your Athena account username. They can create your workstation account. The account made for you on the workstation will: @itemize[have the same username as the Athena account the same password the same group memberships the same personal data you may have specified with the @i(chfn) and @i(chsh) commands. ] If you change your password on the workstation with @i(passwd), the change will @i(not) be propogated back to the Athena timesharing machines and vice versa. This is different from the "change it here and it changes everywhere" password rule on the Athena timesharing machines. Your home directory on the workstation is under: @format[ /site/mit/@i(username) ] This directory will have the same small repetoire of starter files (@i(welcome, .login, .cshrc), etc.) as come with any new Athena account. You will have no disk space quota on the workstation. However, the user filespace storage available on the workstation is quite small: currently (May 1, 1986) about 5.25 meg (5225 kbytes). @foot[A newer version of the workstation system in development will have more space.] This is only about twice the default disk space quota for project accounts on timesharing machines (2.5 meg, 2500 kbytes). Everybody must share this small space. It will fill up very quickly and you will start to get "/site partition full" messages. Because of the small user filespace available, we recommend that you use your timesharing machine account as your main file repository, copying only the files that you need to the workstation during each session, recopying them to the timesharing system at session end, and deleting them from the workstation. The procedure is described in the chapter "File Transfer and Backup." When the @p(user RVD) system is set up, you will appear to have ample filespace on your workstation and you can drop the timesharing file copy strategy for everything but file backups. Workstation files are @b(not backed up). You must do this yourself. Because the workstation model we now employ relies heavily upon you having a timesharing account for file storage and mail, the first thing you should do with your new workstation account is create all the set-ups that will make it easy to @i(rlogin) to the timesharing system, get your DISPLAY environment variable set so that the X window system works across the network, and permit @i(rcp) file transfer. This is described in the next chapter. @section(For System Managers: How to Make Workstation Accounts) @subsection(Policy) You make your own accounts on your workstation. Since development cluster workstations are "private" workstations, you can give anybody you like an account: we don't care about what we have no hope of controlling. However, the easiest way to make an account on a workstation is to @b(copy) an Athena account with the @i(/etc/athena/adduser) script. A Unix account's uniqueness os guarded by three things: a username, a numeric uid (user id), and an encrypted password. If you don't have the same three on the workstation as you have on Athena, you aren't the same person. You can't @i(rlogin) to your other Athena accounts, transfer files, or send/receive mail. We recommended, therefore, that when people come to you asking for an account, that you tell them to get an Athena account @i(first). Then you can use the convenient @i(adduser) script to add them to the workstation, your users will all be members of the Athena community, and you won't get confused people who don't understand when they can't @i(rlogin) to their timesharing machine when they have the same username on both (but not the same uid). @subsection(Running Adduser) You must be user root to run @i(adduser). Su to root: @example[% su Password: @i(rootpassword) #] and type: @example[# /etc/athena/adduser @i(athenausername)] Replace @i(athenausername) with whatever that user's Athena username is. At thispoint, the @i(adduser) script goes out over the network to the system that holds the main Athena user database. It finds the username and its password, primary group, default @i(chfn) and @i(chsh) information. It then: @enumerate[ Creates a line for the user in the workstation's @i(/etc/passwd) file. @i(/etc/passwd) defines who has an account on a Unix machine. To learn more about it, type: @i(man 5 passwd) and @i(man adduser). Creates a home directory under @i(/site/mit) and makes the user its owner. Copies a starter set of files from the @i(/usr/prototype_user) directory.] It takes a little time. "User added" denotes success. @foot(Note: as of May 1, you could fail with the message: "/tmp/adduser: no such file or directory." @i(cd) to @i(/site) and @i(mkdir tmp) and the problem should be fixed.) If the network or the user database machine is down, it won't work. Try again later. If the user is not in the database, you will see: @example[Failed to retrieve data for user 'username' Cannot find user information] In this case, you should send the person to Athena to get an Athena account and try again after they have one. If Athena won't give the person an account (he/she doesn't fall into one of the four categories listed in the previous section) you can still make them an account "manually" by following the three steps enumerated above. You must, however, take care to @i(avoid conflict with Athena usernames and uids). Please follow these conventions: @itemize[Pick a username suffixed with "_l" (underbar followed by a single letter) such as @i(john_o) Pick a uid out of Athena's assignment range. Use a number between 30000 and 32767.] See @i(man 5 passwd) and @i(man adduser) for more information on adding non-Athena users "manually." Athena will not take requests to add people with specific uids: get your Athena account first. @subsection(Routine Maintenance) You must act as "account administrator" on your local system. The most common problem people have is forgetting their password. There is no way to discover a user's password. Instead, you fix the problem by su'ing to root and resetting the password to what the user tells you: @example[% su Password: @i(rootpassword) # passwd @i(username) New password: @i(newpassword) Retype new password: @I(newpassword) # exit % ] Passwords changed on a workstation are @i(not) propogated back to Athena timesharing machines.