[2009] in SIPB_Linux_Development
Re: suggestion for root logins
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Salvatore Valente)
Fri Apr 10 03:11:28 1998
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 03:11:06 -0400 (EDT)
To: efoo@MIT.EDU
Cc: linux-dev@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19971209004834.007d94d0@po10.mit.edu> (message from
Edwin Foo on Tue, 09 Dec 1997 00:48:34 -0500)
From: Salvatore Valente <svalente@MIT.EDU>
Hi. A few months ago, you wrote:
One thing I've noticed in my usage of Linux-Athena over the years has
been that logging in as root always seemed to contact the
hesiod/kerberos server... But in root's case, could that be
made an exception so it always looks in /etc/passwd instead?
This is a great idea and it's also so painfully obvious that it's
embarassing that Athena login has not always behaved like that. I
modified xlogin so that you can tell it that an account is a "local
user". When a local user logs in, xlogin doesn't attempt to contact
the network servers (hesiod and kerberos). It just does a standard
Unix login. (Of course, root is a local account.) I forwarded the
patch to the Athena developers, and they improved it, and it will be
in Athena release 8.2 and the Linux-Athena release that will be based
on Athena 8.2. Unfortunately, I can't easily integrate it into the
current Linux-Athena release, since the modifications are all in the
new Athena-Login library, which Linux-Athena does not currently use.
Thanks for the suggestion and sorry for the delay,
Sal.
