System administration

[David Goodenough]

>From article <17633 at adm.BRL.MIL>, by D_AGC%vaxa.nerc-keyworth.ac.uk at nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk:
] I'm looking for one or more utilities which could be used to provide a
] limited  and  well  controlled system administration environment for a
] generic unix system. The intention is that these could be  used  by  a
] designated  user  (or  users)  to create (maybe delete) user accounts,
] initiate file-sys saves and restores,  and  other  system  admin  type
] stuff without requiring that anyone log on as superuser because (where
] necessary) the software would setuid superuser.
]  
] The  sys  admin  environment  would  be  used by a trusted user of the
] system who would need to be both protected from the  system  and  from
] whom  the  system  would need to be protected. It would not have to be
] all embracing, merely to cover the more common requirements,  such  as
] those  just  mentioned,  as anything more demanding would be done by a
] member of the computer services staff.

I don't know if it will be posted, but I submitted a program "secure"
to comp.sources.unix. This could very easily be changed to do what is
wanted here: simply have it check if the real user id of it's invoker
is on some form of trusted list. Then by changing the things in the
list of secure programs, you'd be all set. If secure does get approved,
people might want to comment on the viability of doing this.
-- 
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