Setting up users
Your system will have a number of different users to whom you will want to be able to give factilites to create files for themselves, to read certain communal files (for example library programs) and to have selective access to other users' files.
The list of authorised users in a SJ Research File Server is kept in a file called the password file. This file can be read and saved only by someone with system privilege - normally only the system manager himself and only when the front panel key-switch is turned to the SYST position. The password file contains information about each user: their password, any accounts they have access to, and administrative information concerning start-up (boot) options, library directories and user root directories.
If someone logs on to the system, and their name does not appear in the password file, then they will be logged on as the default user, if one has been set up by the system manager using EDITPASS (see Section 5.3). If no default user has been set by the system manager, the user will receive the error User not known.
When a user listed in the password file logs on, any password they quote will be checked against the one in the password file before the log-on is allowed to proceed. They will then be given any rights and privileges listed against their name in the password file. The system will then search the disk on which the user's password file entry was found for the User Root Directory specified for that user in the password file, which by default has that user's name, and will set this to be the currently selected directory (see Section 3.3 under *I AM for details). If no appropriately named directory is found, the disk root directory will be selected.
As described more fully in Section 3.3 (under *ACCESS and *ACCOUNT), the account(s) to which a user is given access control two things:
First, every file (or directory) has an account number, and if a user has access to this account, then they are an owner of that file (or directory). Only an owner may create files in a directory, and only an owner may delete a file or change its access letters (see Section 3.3 under the *ACCESS command). Note that there can be more than one owner of a file (or directory), simply by allocating access to its account to more than one user - this can be useful for communal files in a project.
Second, each account has a credit balance of storage space, and an attempt to create a file which would cause that balance to become less than zero will be prevented, and cause the error Account bankrupt.
It is wise to plan your list of users, and the accounts for them, on paper and keep it up to date. There is no security required for account numbers and users' names, and even a moderately sized system can have more users and accounts than can be displayed on a screen.
User names may have up to ten characters, which may include letters, numers and dashes, and must start with a letter. Normally the user's name would be their own surname or initials. However, user names must be unique in the system, so you may wish to add figures to the end of a name.
Account numbers range between 0 and 7FF (hexadecimal), but you may of course ignore the hexidecimal part and just use numbers up to 799. Allocating account number 0 gives ownership of the system root directory, so account 0 should be allocated only to system privileged users.