DELETING (or remaking) SCO User accounts

Rich Braun rbraun at spdcc.COM
Wed Apr 24 03:31:48 AEST 1991


>> I need information on how to "remake" or delete a user account on SCO
>> Unix Sys V.3.2.2.  They say in the admin guide that an account is NEVER
>> deleted, just retired, PERMANENTLY!

djm at eng.umd.edu (David J. MacKenzie) writes:
>That's if you only use their sysadmsh to manage accounts.  All you
>have to do is basically
>
>find /tcb /etc/auth -type f -print | xargs grep -l USERNAME
>
>then hand-edit the files that it lists as appropriate.  I changed my
>username this way (without changing my UID), and I think I've
>undeleted a user or two as well.

SCO also says you can't change the UID of a given user, which is also
false.  I have to do it in an NFS environment; for example, when some other
Unix or Novell administrator creates a login for a user who has an
account on my system, I have to change the UID on each system so they
all match.  (SCO didn't supply *any* scripts which are capable of
synchronizing account maintenance across a network of systems, and with
the small size of my site it's not yet worth it for me to come up with
such scripts across the diversity of platforms we have.)

David's posting is basically the right idea:  look in subdirectories of
/tcb and /etc/auth for the two or three files associated with each user.
Also don't forget to update /etc/passwd if you need to delete or change
a username, UID, or GID.  Also, make sure the ownership UID and GID
associated with the files in /tcb and /etc/auth are set correctly, and
that the ownership of the user's home directory and files are correct.

To the folks at SCO:  can you supply scripts in some future release
which can handle all these revisions properly?  In an NFS environment,
this is not just a convenience, but a necessity.

-rich



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