spuchange - update or change user permissions
spuchange [ -options ] [ users ]
spuchange may be used to update the user permissions file giving the user profiles of various users and the operations which they may be permitted to perform within the GNUspool system, together with the default permissions which are assigned by default to new GNUspool users.
Further options allow for a ``password dump'' file to be maintained. This is for the benefit of NIS-type environments where reading through most of the password database can take an unacceptably long time, the user name and userid hash table is maintained in a file and updated as necessary.
The invoking user must have edit admin file permission.
The environment variable on which options are supplied is SPUCHANGE
and the
environment variable to specify the help file is SPRESTCONF
.
causes a summary of the other options to be displayed without taking further action.
copy the default profile to all users before setting other permissions on the named users (with the -u option) or after setting the defaults (with the -D option).
The privileges of the invoking user are not changed by this operation.
set the class code of the user(s)
as specified by the argument.
indicate that the other options are to apply to the default profile for new users.
set the default job priority to num, which must be between 1 and 255.
set the permitted form types to match pattern.
set the default form type to formtype.
set the minimum job priority to num, which must be between 1 and 255.
set the maximum job priority to num, which must be between 1 and 255.
cancel the -R option.
set the maximum number of copies to num, which must be between 1 and 255.
set the permitted printers to match pattern.
set the default printer to printer.
set the privileges of the user(s)
as specified by the argument.
rebuild the user permissions file spufile0 incorporating any changes in the password list.
cancel the effect of the -A option
indicate that the other options are to apply to the users specified on the rest of the command line.
dump out the hash table of the password file to avoid re-reading the password file within the other programs.
default handling of password hash file dump - rebuild if it is already present and -R specified, otherwise not.
delete any existing dumped password hash file.
Save all the current options in a .gnuspool file in the current directory.
Save all the current options in a .gnuspool file in the user's home directory.
In one operation spuchange either adjusts the default permissions, to be applied to new users, if -D is specified, or specified users, if nothing or -u is specified. So first set the required defaults:
spuchange -D -n 20 -p Form,Prinq,Hgo,Cdef -A
Then set named users
spuchange -p ALL jmc root spooler
After adding new users to the system, you should rebuild the user control file by running
spuchange -R
On a system with a large number of users, this can take a long time, so the previous method of adding new users as they were encountered meant that various hold-ups occurred in standard utilities or the scheduler, whichever was the first to ``notice'' the changes, which might, in the event, be half-complete.
We suggest that this command be added to the ``add new user'' procedure for your installation.
When any of the GNUspool programs which may require to map numeric user ids to names and vice versa start, one of the first operations is to build the appropriate hash tables. This may take some time if there are a large number of user names, especially if NIS (a.k.a. yellow pages) is in use.
A short cut is to dump out the password file into a hash table file, by default pwdump0, which may be quickly read in by the relevant programs instead of rebuilding the hash table each time.
You may opt to create the dumped password file by running
spuchange -X
This should only be done when all GNUspool programs are stopped.
Afterwards, each time the user control file is rebuilt using the -R option (or equivalents in other programs such as spuser(1)), this file will also be rebuilt. -X does not have to be specified again.
If you ever decide you want to dispense with this file, run spuchange with the -Z option.
For completeness, the -Y option is provided to cancel -X or -Z in case they are provided in the environment or a .gnuspool file, an extremely bad idea.
The following may be specified as the argument to -p, as one or more (comma-separated) of the following codes, optionally preceded by a minus to turn off the corresponding privilege. These codes are the same as those displayed by spulist(1).
Spuchange disregards the case of the codes entered.
edit admin file
stop scheduler
select forms other than restriction pattern
select printers other than restriction pattern
change priority once queued
edit other users' jobs.
select printer list
stop and start printers
select any priority once queued
change own default priority within range
add and delete printers
override class
unqueue jobs
view (but not change) other users' jobs
access remote jobs
access remote printers
access non-displayed job attributes
freeze parameters from display
ALL
may be used to denote all of the permissions. For example:
-p Otherj,Otherp -p ALL,-Adm
Notice how ALL
is set first and then Adm
taken away in the
second example.
A hexadecimal value is also accepted, but this is intended only for the benefit of the installation routines.
~/.gnuspool configuration file (home directory)
.gnuspool configuration file (current directory)
rest.help message file
pwdump0 dumped password hash file
spufile0 user permissions file
space-separated options to override defaults.
location of alternative help file.
spulist(1), spuser(1), spsyntax(5), gnuspool.conf(5), gnuspool.hosts(5).
Various diagnostics are read and printed as required from the message file, by default rest.help.
John M Collins, Xi Software Ltd.