Administration groups: Dialog's buttons

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## 3. Dialog's buttons

Here are the functions associated to the various dialog buttons

## 3.1 Add

This will enlarge the dialog to allow more members (Not completed yet).

## 3.2 Del

This allows you to delete the administration group. This delete the information in Linuxconf, but the files in

> `

>             /etc/linuxconf/admgroups/group-id

> `

are not deleted.

## 3.3 Publish

This takes a snapshot of the selected sub-systems in the administration tree. The snapshot is installed in

> `

>             /etc/linuxconf/admgroups/group-id

> `

Once published, an administration group is ready to be shared with members of the group, using either the export functionality or any other mean you can imagine. The directory tree of an administration group may be installed on any Linuxconf station with the netadm module and imported, making it operational.

## 3.4 Export

Export use a custom protocol to reach another Linuxconf host. It then sends the content of the administration group repository and then trigger and import procedure and an activation procedure (netconf --update).

Currently, this procedure is manual. For each member of the administration group, Linuxconf is prompting you for its root password. Using this password, it can get access and completes the operation.

This is only one way an administration group repository may be shared. One may choose to export it using NFS (depending of the level of privacy required) or any other well known network protocol.

We believe that much will be needed to make this sharing appropriate for the various network environment out there. Comments are welcome.

### Special accounts for remote administration and cluster management

Linuxconf use special protocols to perform remote administration and cluster management. Those protocols may be encapsulated easily to enhance either connectivity and security.

One nice encapsulating tool is ssh (secure shell). ssh is a great replacement for commands like rlogin, rsh, rcp and telnet. It does basically the same thing (and more), but add strong encryption and compression.

ssh is also very useful just to interconnect two process remotely, by providing a secure (encrypted) link. This is the way Linuxconf is using it.

By setting special account on workstations and servers, you will be able to use that with Linuxconf without even knowing. This is experimental and comments are welcome.

### How to setup a host for cluster management

Linuxconf uses ssh to establish the link. It expect that a special user account "netadm" do exist on the remote host. This user account must have the shell

> `

>             /usr/lib/linuxconf/lib/netadmshell

> `

The account must NOT have a password. The idea is to trigger Linuxconf immediately, which will request the root password using its remote management protocol.

You can use ssh access control to limit who may access you box this way. They need the root password nevertheless to access it.

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