Sun Microsystems Netscape Enterprise Server, Administrator'S Manual

Page: 71 / 532

Chapter 3, Setting Administration Preferences 71
Enabling Distributed Administration
Warning
If you forget the password, you can edit the
admpw
file and simply delete the
encrypted password. You can then go to the Server Manager forms and specify
a new password. Because you can do this, it is very important that you keep
the server computer in a secure place and restrict access to its file system. On
Unix systems, consider changing the file ownership so that it’s writable only by
root or whatever system user runs the Enterprise Administration Server
daemon. On NT systems, restrict the file ownership to the user account
Enterprise Administration Server uses.
Enabling Distributed Administration
Distributed administration allows multiple administrators to change specific
parts of the server. With distributed administration you have three levels of
users:
• superuser is the user listed in the file
server_root /admin-serv/
config/admpw
. This is the user name (and password) you specified
during installation. This user has full access to all forms in Enterprise
Administration Server, except the Users & Groups forms, which depend on
the superuser having a valid account in an LDAP server such as Netscape
Directory Server.
• administrators go directly to the Server Manager forms for a specific
server, including Enterprise Administration Server. The forms they see
depend on the access control rules set up for them (usually done by the
superuser). Administrators can perform limited administrative tasks and can
make changes that affect other users, such as adding users or changing
access control.
• end users can view read-only data stored in the database. Additionally, end
users may be granted access permissions to change only specific data.
For an in-depth discussion of access control for Enterprise Server, see “What Is
Access Control?,” on page 326 in Chapter 14, “Controlling Access to Your
Server.”
Note
Before you can enable distributed administration, you must install a Directory
Server. For more information, see
Netscape Directory Server Administrator’s
Guide .