From: Ed Carp (erc@unislc.uucp)
Date: 08/10/92


From: erc@unislc.uucp (Ed Carp)
Subject: Re: Stabilizing Linux
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1992 22:09:35 GMT

jwinstea@jarthur.claremont.edu (Jim Winstead Jr.) writes:

: Better yet, why are people demanding it without doing anything about
: it? I still have not seen a good 'adduser' utility for Linux - a
: crude one (meaning no fancy curses interface) shouldn't take more than
: a couple of evening programming sessions to write. A user-friendly
: one (read: fancy curses interface) shouldn't be that much harder.

I've got a curses-based one - it pops up a window, asks you for stuff, then
does the magic - but I'm having trouble porting it and getting mailpak 1.3
out the door. It uses some dialog_box functions that I wrote a few years back
that provide a common interface that's simple to program for, and has had a
wide variety of uses. Like I said, it's coming...

: As it is, the only adduser tool I've seen is one that claims to
: have been written during the commericals of a TV show, and it looks
: like it. Hell, even the passwd/chsh programs out there aren't the
: greatest.

Again, I've got a better passwd program, based on John Haugh's shadow password
suite - this one does automatic password verification, to make sure users
don't use passwords like "sex", "love", etc. That one's on 8MM tape at the
moment, and I don't have a way to retrieve it. I'll be in Dallas this
weekend, and perhaps I can get it transferred to cart tape.

: I couldn't have said it better myself, and I'm surprised it's taken
: this long for someone to say it.

I think Ted (like most other people here) have been too busy trying to make
linux better, stronger, and faster [:)] to pay attention to the complaints.

-- 
Ed Carp, N7EKG     erc@apple.com                801/538-0177
"This is the final task I will ever give you, and it  goes  on  forever.   Act
happy, feel happy, be happy, without a reason in the world. Then you can love,
and do what you will."           -- Dan Millman, "Way Of The Peaceful Warrior"