Subject: Guest and non-guest login

From: Thom Dunaway <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 97 14:15:19 -0500

Why don't my posting show up in this list?  This is my third attempt.

I installed several months and am just now getting around to trying to 
fix a problem.  I have guests logging in to virtual servers and I would 
like to log-in myself without the restrictions.  I am in a diff group 
than the guest group, yet the only way I can log-in is if I make my home 
directory the root directory.  If I set my home directory to anything 
else (Like /usr/home/thom) I get an error that the directory does not 
exist, and then an error "Can't create datasocket".  I'm sure that I am 
just an edit away. A suggestion or a shove in the right direction will be 
appreciated.

*******************************
Host House Web Hosting Services
[email-masked]
www.hosthouse.com
*******************************

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From: Michael Brennen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 20:02:31 -0500 (CDT)

> Why don't my posting show up in this list?  This is my third attempt.

I for one find your question unclear.  It also seems to show a basic lack
of understanding about FTP logins and Unix permissions in general.  Not to
be cold, but few have time to explain Unix basics for a daemon that
already requires a good understanding to set up.  If you don't have the
basics down and can't set up a secure ftp server, you may be setting
yourself up for a hack. 

> like to log-in myself without the restrictions.

What restrictions?  Guest restrictions?  Permission/access permissions?

What do you want to be able to do?

If you want to be able to log in as an effective "superuser" over your
virtual users and do anything you want, you will have to understand
permissions and ownership and set all files and directories appropriately.
If you are a different user in a different group, then you cannot do
anything you want without setting everything world read/writeable.  For
fairly obvious reasons one would not want to do that. 

> I am in a diff group 

Is this a real login (not chrooted guest)?  You did not say, but it is
important.  If it is a 'real user' login, it should work; if not, you are
missing something fundamental in your system structure.  Go over the howto
and make sure that all required libs and devices exist for your system. If
this is a guest login and /usr/home/thom does not have the proper
directory structures, it may well fail like this.  But you knew that. 

   -- Michael