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- From: rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Ruth Milner)
- Subject: Re: Question Regarding Solaris RTU Licensing (long)
- Message-ID: <1992Nov19.213353.11276@zia.aoc.nrao.edu>
- Reply-To: rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Ruth Milner)
- Organization: National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro NM
- References: <BxvIxz.5qn@trc.amoco.com> <1992Nov18.222321.10382@zia.aoc.nrao.edu> <1992Nov19.133756@siisun.epfl.ch>
- Date: Thu, 19 Nov 92 21:33:53 GMT
- Lines: 75
-
- In article <1992Nov19.133756@siisun.epfl.ch> brossard@sic.epfl.ch writes:
- >In article <1992Nov18.222321.10382@zia.aoc.nrao.edu>, rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Ruth Milner) writes:
- >|> In article <BxvIxz.5qn@trc.amoco.com> zclc09@npbu018.hou.amoco.com writes:
- >|> >I have a question regarding licensing Sun Solaris RTU's for X-Terminals.
- >|> >I am confused as to whether
- >|> >I need to purchase any additional RTU's for the operating system from
- >|> >Sun for these new systems.
-
- >|> [No.]
-
- > Sun machines as delivered come with a RTU of two users. If you add
- >Xterminal, one may assume that each one represents one more user of
- >the server hence, one more RTU to buy. The fact that this is not
- >enforced by the OS doesn't change the legal aspect of it.
-
- Yes, this is true. But RTU's are for simultaneous users of the system, i.e.
- how many people are allowed to be logged onto it at the same time, not how
- many different individuals might ever log into it at one time or another.
- This is why vendors typically offer licenses along the lines of up to 2, 8,
- 16 etc. users. I think I've even seen this sort of item in the Sun price
- list.
-
- So you don't need to buy an RTU for every X terminal unless you seriously
- expect all of them to be logged into the same system at once. And if your
- users are distributed around workstations so that no more than 2 of them use
- the same system at once, then you're 100% OK.
-
- Of course, this is impossible to enforce if accounts are enabled globally.
-
- > the RTU are for the users on the server, not for using the Xterminals.
-
- Good point ... and this starts to raise some very thorny issues. (I didn't
- intend this posting to be so long when I started, but I just kept thinking
- of new aspects as I typed.)
-
- If you want to be 100% legal about it, this gets complicated very quickly
- when there are multiple Suns on the network that the users can log onto. It's
- easy if workstations are installed and used pretty much 1 per user, but lots
- of people have a SPARC 2 or a 490 or some such which may be used by more than
- 2 people at once (do multiuser-class systems such as {4,6}90's come with more
- than 2 RTUs?).
-
- This applies regardless of where the users are logging in from: Xterminal,
- plain terminal, terminal server, or another computer. So, should you be
- purchasing another RTU for your general-user system every time you add
- another terminal to it? And what's to prevent a single user from logging
- on multiple times, therefore counting as multiple users (which is generally
- how OS's figure it)?
-
- Can you consider the total number of RTUs purchased from Sun as an aggre-
- ate for the whole network, so that as long as you don't have more than
- [# RTUs] logins active at once anywhere, you're OK? I doubt it, though it
- wouldn't be an unreasonable way to proceed. You paid for them, after all.
-
- Then we get the question of the definition of a "login". Most people would
- agree that if you type emacs and get a new window open, it isn't a login. So
- probably it should be whenever "login" is run. Hmmm ... seems to me that with
- judicious use of windows and "su", a single Xterminal user can get a *lot* of
- work done without ever running "login" a second time. Much more than users on
- ASCII terminals; so shouldn't users with windows "count" more?
-
- Also, as someone pointed out in a recent security thread, Xterminal users
- running xdm don't need to start up a shell to run things like filemgr and
- mailtool. xdm as shipped authenticates users, but does it run /bin/login?
- Even if it does, the source code is PD, so anyone could modify it not to.
- (I won't get into whether that might then be considered illegal.)
-
- No wonder SunOS doesn't enforce the number of logged-in users!
-
- I'd be interested in hearing from Sun people on this issue, and how Sun is
- looking at it. Any plans to start enforcing interactive-user licensing?
- If so, what do you consider a "user"?
- --
- Ruth Milner NRAO/VLA Socorro NM
- Computing Division Head rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu
-