3 Replies Latest reply on Jul 25, 2012 9:44 AM by Andrew St. Jean

    Managing user accounts on Unix

    Andrew St. Jean Jul 10, 2012 3:03 PM
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      Has anyone done any user account management on Solaris and Linux? I'm messing around with blpackages with the object of adding, removing, modifying, and changing the passwords on user accounts and I've found a few things that have left me scratching my head. I'm working with BSA 8.2 SP1 by the way.

       

      I can't see a difference between the Add and Modify actions on a Unix User object in a blpackage. Both add a user account if the user account doesn't already exist on a Linux box and both modify an existing user account. Am I missing something or is there really no difference between the two actions? My thought is it would be really nice if the Modify action modified an existing user account but didn't do anything if the account didn't already exist on a server.

       

      I'm wrestling with changing passwords through a blpackage. I'm getting tripped because there seems to be a password strength checker in the Update Password Action associated with the Unix User object. The blpackage doesn't like my password even though the Linux server I'm trying to push it to will accept it without complaint if I log into it as root and use passwd directly. I can see the utility of a password strength checker, but I also want to be able to turn it off if I need to. Anyone know how I get around it?

       

      Andrew

        • 1. Managing user accounts on Unix
          Bill Robinson
          Bill Robinson Moderator Jul 12, 2012 10:10 AM (in response to Andrew St. Jean)

          I would expect a 'modify' to only modify the user account, and if it wasn't there, to not create it.  if you see otherwise i would open a ticket w/ support.

           

          there is not a passwd strength checker in the CO, can you attach your bldeploy log from the target w/ the failure?

          • 2. Managing user accounts on Unix
            Andrew St. Jean Jul 12, 2012 10:20 AM (in response to Bill Robinson)

            BBSA is definately adding user accounts even when I set the action on my BLPackage to Modify. It does this on Linux and Solaris. I'll open a ticket with support.

             

            The password strength checker thing is my bad. It's Linux that doesn't like my password. I can just ignore the error message that Linux spits out when I'm setting my password using passwd. BBSA quite rightly doesn't ignore the message when I'm using a BLPackage to deploy a user account.

            • 3. Re: Managing user accounts on Unix
              Andrew St. Jean Jul 25, 2012 9:44 AM (in response to Andrew St. Jean)

              In case anyone is interested, BMC Support has created a Defect for the issue I found with Unix user account Add and Modify Actions in a BLPackage having identical behaviour. I look forward to the behaviour changing in a future release of BBSA.