commands from shadow package

Harald Becker ralda at gmx.de
Sun Feb 21 11:47:27 UTC 2010


Hallo Denys!

> I don't see why any of "missing" commands are vital, but if you do
> need some of them (e.g. "distro foo fails to do bar if command baz is
> missing"), please describe.
Don't know if any distro install needs one of them (may be chgpasswd,
like chpasswd).

As I do use several unix groups to grant access to some data or
programs, it's necessary to change my current group from time to time.
Thats it, why I need newgrp. Additionally from time to time standard
scripts and commands need to be started with a different group, the
point where sg comes in. And sometimes group passwords need to be
changed. It's possible to do this using cryptpw and an editor (or sed)
but gpasswd is ways more easy.

In the past I used expiry on a server machine to force users to change
there passwords (after setting some OTP in case of a forgotten
password). And sometimes users need to change there login shell (chsh)
without knocking on an administrators door. Think of small functionally
dedicated servers on some cheap (respective old) hardware without local
terminals and limited resources, where users are granted access to some
of the hardware connected to that machine, or data acquired by that
machine. Only the administrator hast root access, but users get full
shell access via ssh to control the connected hardware etc.
 
> Sure, why not?
Just to ask, if it's welcome or if there are reasons not to include
those commands into busybox.

> Whoever doesn't need then could always disable then in .config...
>   
That was my thought.

Tschau
   Harald



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