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Re: ntsec odds and ends


> At 03:05 PM 2/6/2003 -0000, Max Bowsher wrote:
>> Truncation by ls shouldn't matter much. I would say that a new user
>> is more likely to notice "run mkpa" than "mkpasswd".

Pierre A. Humblet wrote:
> Max got exactly right why I had put the "run" in.
> 1.3.19 already contains an embryo of the ideas. The group is set to
> "mkgroup" if things look wrong (either passwd or group).
> Unfortunately look at
> <http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2003-02/msg00302.html>
>
> A new user took the trouble to send us the outputs of "id" AND "ls
> -l".
> The word "mkgroup" is in plain view but didn't excite any neurons
> (it does to us, because we already know of mkgroup).
> That's why I thought that an imperative could help, as short as
> possible "do", "go", "run",... , something that won't look as a
> plausible group name. "dumbass" has merit, but at that stage it's not
> the user's fault if passwd is incomplete. Flashing ls has merit too,
> but I'd rather restrict the changes to cygwin itself (dll or install
> scripts).
>
> Earlier I wrote that I considered changing the user's name, but that
> it could have side effects. I was afraid of /etc/profile creating a
> directory under the incorrect name. After reviewing it, I see that I
> was wrong.
> HOME is always set in a way that doesn't depend on the user name
> and the home directory is always set from the current HOME.
>
> So we could consider changing the user's name if it is not in
> /etc/passwd. That would be much more detectable than changing the
> group name.
> Using the formats of "ls -l" and "id" we could set the name to
> "run mkpa" and the group to "sswd   and mkgroup to set your identity".
> (the last 6 words will only show in "id"),
> or the name to "type mkp", where mkp would be a shell script
> explaining what to do, or to some other combination yet to be
> contributed.

How about putting all of "run mkpasswd and mkgroup to set your identity" in
the username?

Then it will show up in the default bash prompt.


Max.



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