Topic: Primary user group - LAT tools

[bloodshoteye]

Hi all 

I'm setting up a server for a school, and finding lazy-admin tools very helpful. Thanks to the developers.

What is needed is to create users whose primary group can be assigned via lat-users. So far I've only been able to create a user whose group is also his user name, (although they can belong to other groups, which is desired).

What I'm trying to say is this:
If an admin accesses home drives via a tool like WinSCP, he can sort entire school-classes together for user manipulation - things like move them collectively to a temporary location and provide a temporary, empty home drive for tests. Or manipulate the permissions on files/dirs, etc, using the GUI of WinSCP.
By allocating all users to specific primary groups, the users/classes can be sorted very nicely by hitting the various header tabs in WinSCP.
I notice that I can go in via WinSCP and manually change each user to a specific primary group, but we're talking 600 users...

Please remember: this is a school and teaching staff need at least the sort of GUI provided by WinSCP in a windows environment.
Has anybody done this? If so please share how you did it.

Thanks in advance.

[bloodshoteye]

I think I should go grab a beer - in for a longish wait - not many school applications, I guess.

[shell]

Hi arudgh,

I have used LAT to add users with multiple groups, the group names come last - so 

Code: [Select]

lat-users -a -c ``user | first | last | password | department | company | street | city | tel | forward | email | uid | group1 | group2 | group3"
if you don't want some info installed then just place empty || so if you only have the compulsory items - username, first and lastname then you would do:

Code: [Select]

lat-users -a -c ``jsmith | jane | smith | | | | | | | |  | | group1 | group2 | group3"
I think for this method you have to have the groups setup first, but its been a while...

For this you could look at lat-groups

Here are the manuals:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/smeserver/contribs/mblotwijk/Contribs/lazy-admin-tools/man/

which are also available with

Code: [Select]

man lat-groupsor

Code: [Select]

man lat-users
As to your other request - I'm not sure if this fits the bill but there is an ability to go against the "linux home is owned solely by each user" mentality, - ie give your teachers access to the students home directories.  this allows you to give a set list of users access to other user directories - i'll have a quick search for my info and get back to you.

I have worked with SME in a number of schools and would have avoided letting teachers do things like:

move them collectively to a temporary location and provide a temporary, empty home drive for tests. Or manipulate the permissions on files/dirs, etc, using the GUI of WinSCP.

but thats because I often had to show (and reshow ) such things as basic file manipulation techniques inside a Windows environment.  Your call....

Cheers, shell

EDIT:
admin_shares:
http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=36895

[bloodshoteye]

Hi shell,

1) I searched for admin_share as per your post and found a very useful template expansion, which I'm now using. This is absolutely most useful in a school environment 

2) Thanks for the pointers to LAT. I've read their man entries and did create users as per -i /path_to_file method.
I should have been clearer on that point:
I have a group name in the correct position, and the users were correctly assigned to that group.

What prompted my post was desire to assign primary GID's, (from a file), on user creation. LAT, (and SME panel), assign the user name as primary GID, no matter what other GID's are specified.
I can show the school how to change this using WinSCP - for e.g if a teacher

was just interested to know if anyone has come across this "requirement" and if they had a "solution"

BTW, this snippet is from an Ubuntu + Samba setup, and works by allowing access to certain groups only:
  [users]
   create mask = 0770
   comment = User Admin
   valid users = @group1, @group2,@group3
   path = /home
   write list = @group1, @group2
        browsable = yes

I wonder if that can be used on SME Server? - don't see why not.