Re: Xwinnmr- User management

Rudi Nunlist (rnunlist@purcell.cchem.berkeley.edu)
Fri, 30 May 1997 08:31:04 -0700

We used to give out accounts for different groups, but ended up going
back to a generic login. The problem was that too often users would forget
to log out, and the next persons did'n realize that they were logged in under
a different name (until they tried to access their data..)
On the older X32 based systems, the overhead of login-run_uxnmr_logout is
severe enough to be impratical (i.e., several times the time it takes to
acquire a few scans..).
Currently we use a generic account on a new DRX-500 console and a workstation.
Remote users of the workstation have their onw accounts and group. This is
workable, getting the file permissions straight may take some work, especially if
older X32's need to be accessible as well.
We have not had any problems with users deleting other's files, (in fact, most
don't know how to delet data sets, but that is another story..).
As far as setting the umask, I added a specific umask in the xwinnmr
startup script to prevent problems if someone modifies their own .login or
.tcshrc.
I also ditched the SGI 4Dwm after the desktop quickly became an ugly sight, and
installed fvwm95 instead. Fvwm95 is much harder to mess up and, I think, easier
to set up (it also looks very much like a commercial product (runnig on PC's
since late 95...).
Another advantage of this approach is that the same WM also runs on an old
Sun and a PC in our lab, so to the user they pretty much look like the SGI
console.

One question I have:
Does anyone know of a fix for 'edc' in uxnmr, and xwinnmr1.3 where
one can name a data set '***' ? It is really funny when one later wants to delete it...
(Even funnier is to make a uxnmr 'user' entry '*' and then delete it..) One can also
make a data set 'Cp(N)Ir(OTf)2?', which ux|xwin-nmr cannot delete. (This also applies
to entering names for shim files, parameter sets, etc).

Regards,

Rudi Nunlist