Re: [TAF] wiki://DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/
David Prévot wrote:
> I didn't send this call at the best moment of the year, may I renew this
> call for help on behalf of the Debian Edu team (beta1 and beta2 have
> even been published in the mean time).
I've finally got to the end of my "proofreading" sweep, but a couple
of pages could do with some non-semantics-preserving work so I'll
mention them here.
On the "HowTo/NetworkClients" page
==================================
I left this one until last in my sweep because it's long and a bit
meandering. Should it perhaps be split up, for instance by moving all
the stuff about Windows into the "HowTo/Samba" page?
(Mind you, it's odd that the mixed-networks stuff is so MS-centric.
The last place I used Samba was a predominantly Mac OS X network...
does that never happen in schools?)
On the "Architecture" page
==========================
This makes an awful lot of fuss about User Private Groups:
# To enable shared file access control using the file groups, each user
# must be assigned a primary group with no other members. The name of
# this private group should be identical to the username. (*More info
# on private groups, default mask and file sharing is available from
# Redhat.) This allows for all new files created by the user to be set
# with full access for the file's group. Together with the setgid bit
# on directories and inheritance of rights, this enables controlled
# file sharing between the members of a file group. Therefore, the
# users' umask should be 00X. (If all users initially should be able
# to read newly created files, then X=2. If only the relevant group
# should be given initial read access then X=7.) The Debian default
# umask 022 is changed by Debian Edu to 002 to enable file sharing
# using file groups as explained above. If one wants the umask to be
# 007 instead of 002, /etc/pam.d/common-session should be modified
# appropriately.
Problems:
* The UPG setup which this text and the RedHat link go to so much
trouble explaining might seem a novelty to somebody coming to Linux
from SCO Xenix or something, but it has always been what you get by
default on Debian. I see no real reason to mention it at all.
* The point where you need to start explaining is surely the point
where the sysadmin starts putting users in *shared* groups, a step
completely missed in the above explanation.
* The distinction between 002 and 007 umasks isn't relevant to this,
and belongs in the next paragraph.
Oh, and:
* Don't call them "file groups" - that would mean groups of files.
So if nobody objects I'll rewrite it as something like:
To enable shared access to files under the normal UNIX permissions
system, users need to be in supplementary shared groups (such as
"students") as well as the personal primary group that they're in by
default. If users have an appropriate umask to make newly created
items group-accessible, and if the directories they're working in
are setgid to ensure the files inherit the correct group-ownership,
the result is controlled file sharing between the members of a
group.
...and shift the 002/007 umask details into the following paragraph.
While I'm looking at this page, though: it's using predominantly en_US
spellings, while others in the suite are using en_GB (for instance the
Samba page talks about the "Network Neighbourhood"). Looking at the
distribution map of Skolelinux sites, en_GB would probably make more
sense - should I do an overall consistency sweep?
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
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