OSF DCE Administration Guide--Core Components

OSF DCE Administration Guide—Core Components
30.1.2 Full Names
Full names can be assigned optionally to principals, groups, and organizations. An
object’s full name is for information purposes. It typically describes or expands a
primary name to allow easy recognition by users. For example, a principal could have a
primary name of jsbach and a full name of Johann S. Bach. An organization could
have the primary name moco and the full name Motet Composers.
A full name is a data field only. You cannot use it to query the registry database. You
can create the principal’s, group’s, or organization’s full name when you create the
principal, group, and organization itself.
30.1.3 Aliases
An alias is an optional alternate name for a primary name. Aliases can be assigned to
principals and groups, but not to organizations. Aliases and the primary name for which
they are an alternate share the same UUID and UNIX ID. (UUIDs and UNIX IDs are
described in Section 30.4.) An alias is a key field that you can use to query the registry
database.
Because you can create one account for each primary name and each alias, aliases give
you the flexibility to establish several accounts for the same principal. For example,
assume that for the primary name mahler you create three aliases: gustav, gus, and gm.
You can then create four accounts for the principal mahler: one for the primary name
and one for each of the name’s aliases. The accounts can use different home directories
and passwords and can be associated with different groups and organizations.
Because principals accrue only the rights that are associated with the primary name or
the alias that they log in with, these multiple accounts for the same person accommodate
different access patterns. For example, mahler may be a member of the composers
group and gustav can be a member of the music_admin group, which is a group of
system administrators. The principal mahler logs in as mahler to perform day-to-day
tasks and as gustav to perform administrative duties. To help prevent accidental damage
to the system, it is a good idea to set up accounts so that users can log into an account
with the least privileges necessary to perform their tasks.
For groups, aliases are useful if you want to associate two group names with the same
UNIX number.
See Section 30.9 for information on creating aliases.
30.1.4 Name Formats
Names in the registry can contain any characters or digits, except the @ (at sign) and the
: (colon) character. They must not exceed 1024 characters in length.
30 − 2 Tandem Computers Incorporated 124243