OSF DCE Administration Guide--Core Components

OSF DCE Administration Guide—Core Components
4. Use the account object to create an account for the principal.
5. Use the directory object to create a directory for the principal in CDS.
6. Use the acl object to give the principal access to the CDS directory.
Performing these six steps probably wouldn’t pose any problems in a small cell with 15
or 20 users. But consider a cell with more, perhaps a hundred or maybe even a thousand
or more users, and the need to automate this and other administration tasks becomes
evident.
To meet this administration need, the DCE control program includes several
administration task objects for performing some routine DCE administration tasks. Here,
we’re using the term task to mean doing something that requires multiple steps, such as
when adding a user consists of performing six lower-level operations.
One of the task objects is the user object that you can use to add and remove user
information in your DCE environment. For instance, a single invocation of the user
object can perform all six of the previously mentioned steps needed to correctly add a
new user to your DCE environment. You can also use this same task object to delete the
user from your environment.
The task objects are implemented as dcecp scripts by using the DCE control program
language, which means that you can extend the scripts or change their behavior
according to your needs. For instance, the default implementation of the user task object
does not operate on any GDS or DFS information. If your DCE environment includes
these extended services, you might want to add some GDS or DFS operations to the
script. Part 1 of this guide explains how to use the DCE control program language to
write and modify a dcecp task object.
4.2 Looking Beyond the Tools
Although you use the task objects to perform various administrative operations, your
most important focus is on the elements or entities that you’re managing. Each of four
task objects provided with DCE enables you to manage a specific element or entity in
your DCE cell. The elements are as follows:
A DCE cell You can test whether a cell is running, show general information
about available services in a cell, and back up security and CDS
information by using the cell task object.
Cell name You can create and manage cell alias names, which are needed for
changing a cell’s name or registering a cell in multiple global
directory services. These operations use the cellalias task object.
DCE hosts You can configure and remove DCE hosts in a cell, show
information about hosts in a cell, and start and stop DCE processes
on hosts in a cell by using the host task object.
DCE users You can add and remove users and show information about users in a
DCE cell with the user task object.
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