System administration

[D_AGC%vaxa.nerc-keyworth.ac.uk at nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk]

In digest V6#012 "Snoopy T. Beagle" <snoopy at sopwith.uucp> responded to
a  previous  submission from eirik at tekcrl.TEK.COM (Eirik Fuller) which
has yet to reach me in the UK.

The  discussion  appears to be about providing a system administration
environment of some description and reminds me that  I'm  looking  for
one  or  more  utilities  which could be used to provide a limited and
well controlled system administration environment for a  generic  unix
system. The intention is that these could be used by a designated user
(or  users)  to create (maybe delete) user accounts, initiate file-sys
saves  and  restores,  and  other  system  admin  type  stuff  without
requiring  that  anyone  log on as superuser because (where necessary)
the software would setuid superuser.

The  sys  admin  environment  would  be  used by a trusted user of the
system who would need to be both protected from the  system  and  from
whom  the  system  would need to be protected. It would not have to be
all embracing, merely to cover the more common requirements,  such  as
those  just  mentioned,  as anything more demanding would be done by a
member of the computer services staff.

Can  anybody  point  me to a source of such a collection of software ?
Public domain source is acceptable, as it would be nice  to  have  the
same  environment  on  a  number  of  different  vendors' systems, but
commercial packages are also of interest.

Many thanks to those who respond.

Alan Cox, Natural Environment Research Council, UK

P.S. In view of the fact that not all of Unix-Wizards seems to make it
to  my  mailbox,  direct  replies,  rather  than  to  the  list,  seem
advisable.

P.P.S.  If there is a more appropriate forum for this query please let
me know of it.

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