Re: Groups of groups (and efficiency thereof)

[Peter Lister, Cranfield Computer Centre]

> By putting linda:co-workers into my group - I effectively gave some
> administrative control of my group to Linda, who *later* added the

Well - there we have it! You gave her administrative control, didn't you!

> group kt:people to her own group ...... effectively giving some
> adminstrative control of my group to Katie.  Linda is probably unaware
> of the fact that by modifying her group, she's also modified mine -
> and she really shouldn't *have* to worry about it. Jeff probably has
> no idea that his friends are becomming my co-workers and I'm likely
> unaware of this too.

The first obvious answer is education - MAKE users aware that if they
use someone ELSE's group, they are at the mercy of the group's owner
(that's what ownership means). I think the important thing here is that
this is no more or less than what happens in normal life anyway. A
student wouldn't hand an important document to anyone they didn't trust
if it was on paper (it can be photocopied very quickly...), but it
makes no sense (to me) that this kind of thing should be treated differently.

Since privately owned groups are tagged with the owner's username as
the first part, it's very obvious that they ARE private groups and
hence not necessarily to be trusted. System-wide groups are not
preceded with a username, hence they can (or at least they can be
trusted as much as the rest of the system).

And  - however much of a "quagmire" things may turn out to be, I still
reckon that GoGs make a more easily managed system overall. I
personally would be quite happy with a restricted set of levels of
hierarchy, to reduce spaghetti (e.g. 4). Ideally, I would like this to
be under the control of admin - e.g.

% pts set maxgoglevel 4
maximum group hierarchy set to 4
% pts set maxgoglevel 0
Groups within groups NOT permitted.

Resetting maxgoglevel would not affect existing gogs, simply prevent
new pts add commands from exceeding the limit. In fact, why not 

% pts set gogsformortals off

If a sysadmin really doesn't trust his users. 

> system:adminstrators, groups can only contain groups that are
> owned by the same "person".  Ie, I can have this setup

Not acceptable. However, I would accept that a warning message could be
returned (by default) which informs users that the group they're adding
is owned by someone else and that they're giving that other person some
administrative control and asks for confirmation. 

% pts adduser jim:friends pete:friends
WARNING - If you add group "pete:friends" to "jim:friends", you
effectively give user "pete" the right to add or remove members of "jim:friends"
Do you wish to continue? (yes/no): yes
group "pete:friends" added to "jim:friends"
%

My personal preference is that pts mem should just list the first level
of membership; further details

% pts mem jim:friends
    alice
    sid
    pete:friends
% pts mem jim:friends -grouplevel 2
    alice
    sid
    pete:friends
        bill
        alice
        sid:enemies
            wanda

OK, now does THAT keep everyone happy? I'm a great believer in adding
functionality where possible and useful, but I also believe in allowing
a system manager to switch it off when he needs to.

Peter Lister                                    [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Computer Centre,
Cranfield Institute of Technology,        Voice: +44 234 754200 ext 2828
Cranfield, Bedfordshire MK43 0AL England    Fax: +44 234 750875