add interch user to siteadmin group was Re: [ic] ensim & interchange

[Gary Norton]

Dominic Tey wrote:

>>I have IC installed in /usr/local/interchange owned by root and the 
>>catalogs installed in /home/virtual/#SITE_NAME#/catalogs/#IC_CAT#.
>>
>>The site admin should own files within the site, but the interchange 
>>user is added to the site admins group.
>>    
>>
>
>How do I add the interchange user, interch to the site admins group. 
>I have tried editing the /etc/group file manually but it doesn't seem 
>to help. There should be some shell programme to do so. Any pointers?
>  
>
Well, I know it can be done through Webmin. For reference here is an 
excerpt from my /etc/group file:

admin2:x:517:interch
admin3:x:518:interch
admin4:x:519:interch
admin5:x:520:interch
admin6:x:521:interch
admin8:x:522:interch
admin9:x:523:interch


>>This has worked for me on with version of IC from 4.8-5.3 and with Ensim 
>>3.1-4.1.
>>    
>>
>
>Great to hear that someone has manage to do so, gives me confidence 
>that it can be done :-)
>  
>

It can indeed be done, however it is a pain to manage. I originally set 
this up because I wanted to keep the data storage as part of the Ensim 
site, plus manage the user accounts and FTP through Ensim. However, disk 
space is quite cheap and the only clients I have that utilize the FTP 
for the catalog (other than IC Admin) are actually technical enough that 
they could deal with a separate server account for FTP access.

As you are probably aware, Ensim has a number of ties to the OS. (IE the 
Fedora upgrade installed a Threaded Perl which I had to recompile the 
SRPMS/RPMS etc so I didn't break Ensim) I use CPAN to upgrade and 
maintain the Perl modules, but overall I think I will eventually migrate 
all my IC Catalogs off to another server that only does IC and still 
keep the user account/email management with Ensim. It would have saved 
me a lot of headaches and countless research hours. There doesn't seem 
to be much support the the environment since you are changing the Ensim 
base RPM's etc.

Bottom line is that it works, but hasn't been the great managed 
environment I had hoped for.

Regarding research I found the best forum support for hybrid support 
with Ensim to be http://forum.ev1servers.net. The don't have Interchange 
experience specifically, but there are some very knowledgeable people 
there who are familiar with making customization to the Ensim environment.

Good luck,
Gary