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Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO
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SIGNON.DOC
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Brief Documentation to SIGNON.EXE
Signon allows a user to Login to their server without specifing
exactly which server their account is on or having a path to the
SYS:\LOGIN or SYS:\PUBLIC directory. This program does not circumvent
any password or other account restrictions.
Syntax: SIGNON [<option switch>] [[<server name>/]<object name>]
optional switches:
-t shows all intermediate steps as signon scans the network,
connects and disconnects from servers, and translation of
object name to a bindery ID, then invokes LOGIN.EXE.
-f finger mode: locates username, but does not invoke LOGIN.EXE.
-s standby mode : give account that is published member of the
STANDBY group highest priority.
-m mailuser mode : give account that is published member of the
MAILUSERS group highest priority.
<none> : default, silently locates account and invokes LOGIN.EXE.
optional parameter:
<server name> overrides the scan and invokes LOGIN.EXE directly.
<object name> if not used the username defaults to STUDENT.
Examples:
SIGNON find server with STUDENT account and login.
SIGNON -T STEVED find server with STEVED account and login,
giving output during progress of search.
SIGNON CCS1/STEVED login to CCS1/STEVED.
Signon is also aware that the LOGIN.EXE program could be replaced
and trys to locate files called LOGGIN.EXE or Z$78QF38.EXE first
in either the SYS:\LOGIN and SYS:\PUBLIC directories.
Limitations:
Signon will only scan the first 500 servers.
SignOn Description.
As you add fileservers to your LAN you will begin to see the seeds of
a management nightmare. Users on one server will want access to files
and queues on other servers. You could duplicate some resources and
you could register each user on all servers. This may be required in
any case, as the warm inner glow of such redundancy is keenly sought
by most LAN managers. The Red Box solution is Name Services for
NetWare as sold by your local dealer. What I am offering you is a
not a substitute but close to a half-way-house.
SignOn and its related programs grew from a number of percieved short-
commings of the bare Novell LOGIN.EXE program. LOGIN.EXE has been
greatly revised over the last few years and many features added but
the essential characteristics still persist. SignOn is a preprocessor
that calls the standard LOGIN.EXE after checking a number of things,
and then restores some things afterwards.
1. SignOn can be run successfully from any directory as long as it is
somewhere on the current PATH and your station is attach to a server.
2. SignOn remembers your current default drive and directory and will
restore them after running LOGIN.EXE if they were local to your
station.
3. SignOn will use a default account name if you do not specify one.
Currently this is set to STUDENT, but GUEST is just as easy to
implement.
4. SignOn scans all the servers it can see for the account specified
and will try to initiate a login to the most appropriate server.
Because users may have accounts on a number of servers, and SignOn
will find each occurance, SignOn has been given a strategy to
decide which is the most appropriate. Each time a server is found
with the users account, SignOn checks for the existence on that
server of the groups PRIMARY, STANDBY and MAILUSERS. For each of the
groups found a further check is made to see if the user is a member
of them. Priority is given, in the above order, to accounts that
are members of these groups. If the account is not a member of
any of these groups, preference is given to a server that has the
same network number as the workstation, then to the server where
the station was originally connected and finally to any server
with the account name.
If it all sound too complicated to be of any use, it maybe because
you have not grown to the point where such things are neccessary.
At Monash University there is currently 22 Novell servers providing
a mixture of staff and student services, from teaching laboratories
to secreterial wordprocessing, electronic mail and printing.
For SignOn to be able to check group membership of accounts it is
neccessary to make the property GROUP_MEMBERS of the group visible
to all attached stations and not just those logged in. The program
PUBLISH is provided for this. A companion program, RESETPUB is also
included to do the reverse. Both these programs require SUPERVISOR
equivalence to change the security of the GROUP_MEMBERS property.
The program TEST can be used to verify that PUBLISH and RESETPUB
have done what you require.
Check List
[ ] Create the groups PRIMARY, STANDBY and MAILUSERS, using SYSCON.
[ ] Give membership to one or more of these groups to each account
that will use this system. It helps if each user on your LAN is
a member of one of the groups on at least one of the server.
[ ] Make the members of these groups visible to all attached stations
by running the program PUBLISH.
PUBLISH primary
PUBLISH standby
PUBLISH mailusers
NB: It is not neccessary to PUBLISH all these groups, just the
ones you want to use. Indeed, you can rapidly change the PUBLISH
status by running RESETPUB and/or rename the group as usual.
[ ] Test that the PUBLISH has worked by logging out and running TEST.
TEST primary <joe_user>
[ ] Insert some little test into the system login script to alert
users that they are using the STANDBY account.
if member of STANDBY then begin
write "WARNING: Your primary server is unavailable,"
write " Attached to STANDBY server.
pause
end
[ ] Test that SIGNON is running as you expect by running on one of
the accounts and setting the trace and finger flags.
SIGNON -TF <joe_user>
[ ] Test that SIGNON is running as you expect in standby mode by
running on one of the accounts and setting the trace, finger
and standby flags.
SIGNON -TFS <joe_user>
[ ] Copy SIGNON.EXE to SYS:LOGIN and SYS:PUBLIC or rename LOGIN.EXE
to LOGGIN.EXE and copy SIGNON.EXE as LOGIN.EXE to SYS:LOGIN and
SYS:PUBLIC.
Report bugs & suggestions to SteveD@ccs1.cc.monash.edu.au
No liability what so ever is accepted by me or my employer.