At 08:26 PM 12/14/00 -0800, you wrote:
>Hi all!
>
>Can Dnews authenticate per newsgroup? (eg. user: greg/pw could get access
>to and post in private.class123 but not in private.class456)
Sort of.
>Here's my situation - I have a client that is conducting online training
>classes, and they currently use a unthreaded-style wanna-be newsgroup for
>all their class conversation. They want to move to a threaded newsgroup
>solution, but students may only be enrolled in one or two classes at a
>time -- so, we want private newsgroups with either class userlists (e.g.
>Class123:bob,john,jane) or perhaps userlists w/ group identifiers (e.g.
>bob/pass:class123,class456;john/pass:class456)
>
>Basically, we want to be able to issue our students one user/pass
>combination, and allow them to use it for an entire school year,
>regardless of the classes they are enrolled in each semester. Then, as
>they enroll or complete each class, be able to add or remove classes (and
>therefore newsgroups) from their username/pass combination.
Ok, yes you can do exactly this.
>Obviously, there will be a large user/pass database and many group
>definitions, and I'm sure we will build a custom program to quickly
>enroll/remove users, but I just need to know if it is even possible and
>the general format of the config files to work from in order to consider
>Dnews....
>
>Your response is appreciated!
Basically you use access.conf to specify what newsgroups each 'usergroup'
can read/post to, then in users.dat you define what 'usergroup's' each
student is a member of. Users.dat is a simple text file so can be easily
manipulated by a program. In your case you may have a 1/1 relation between
usergroups and newsgroups, e.g.
User bob, is a member of usergroup1, usergroup2
And usergroup1 gives access to newsgroup1
And usergroup2 gives access to newsgroup2
There is an example of this type of thing on
http://netwinsite.com/dnews/access.htm
Access rules are easy to get wrong so if you have trouble just send us an email
with your sample files and we'll sort it out.
ChrisP.
