Administration Reference

pts examine

Purpose

Displays a Protection Database entry

Synopsis

pts examine -nameorid <user or group name or id>⁺  [-cell <cell name>]   
            [-noauth]  [-force]  [-help]
    
pts e -na <user or group name or id>⁺  [-c <cell name>]  [-no]  [-f]  [-h]
   
pts check -na <user or group name or id>⁺  [-c <cell name>]  
          [-no]  [-f]  [-h]
   
pts che -na <user or group name or id>⁺  [-c <cell name>]  
        [-no]  [-f]  [-h]

Description

The pts examine command displays information from the Protection Database entry of each user, machine or group specified by the -nameorid argument.

Options

-nameorid: Specifies the name or AFS UID of each user, the name or AFS GID of each group, or the IP address (complete or wildcard-style) or AFS UID of each machine for which to display the Protection Database entry. It is acceptable to mix users, machines, and groups on the same command line, as well as names (IP addresses for machines) and IDs. Precede the GID of each group with a hyphen to indicate that it is negative.
-cell: Names the cell in which to run the command. For more details, see the introductory pts reference page.
-noauth: Assigns the unprivileged identity anonymous to the issuer. For more details, see the introductory pts reference page.
-force: Enables the command to continue executing as far as possible when errors or other problems occur, rather than halting execution at the first error.
-help: Prints the online help for this command. All other valid options are ignored.

Output

The output for each entry consists of two lines that include the following fields:

Name

The contents of this field depend on the type of entry:

For a user entry, it is the username that the user types when authenticating with AFS.
For a machine entry, it is either the IP address of a single machine in dotted decimal format, or a wildcard notation that represents a group of machines on the same network. See the pts createuser reference page for an explanation of the wildcard notation.
For a group entry, it is one of two types of group name. If the name has a colon between the two parts, it represents a regular group and the part before the prefix reflects the group's owner. A prefix-less group does not have the owner field or the colon. For more details on group names, see the pts creategroup reference page.

id

A unique number that the AFS server processes use to identify AFS users, machines and groups. AFS UIDs for user and machine entries are positive integers, and AFS GIDs for group entries are negative integers. AFS UIDs and GIDs are similar in function to the UIDs and GIDs used in local file systems such as UFS, but apply only to AFS operations.

owner

The user or group that owns the entry and thus can administer it (change the values in most of the fields displayed in the output of this command), or delete it entirely. The Protection Server automatically records the system:administrators group in this field for user and machine entries at creation time.

creator

The user who issued the pts createuser or pts creategroup command to create the entry. This field serves as an audit trail, and cannot be changed.

membership

An integer that for users and machines represents the number of groups to which the user or machine belongs. For groups, it represents the number of group members.

flags

A string of five characters, referred to as privacy flags, which indicate who can display or administer certain aspects of the entry.

s: Controls who can issue the pts examine command to display the entry.
o: Controls who can issue the pts listowned command to display the groups that a user or group owns.
m: Controls who can issue the pts membership command to display the groups a user or machine belongs to, or which users or machines belong to a group.
a: Controls who can issue the pts adduser command to add a user or machine to a group. It is meaningful only for groups, but a value must always be set for it even on user and machine entries.
r: Controls who can issue the pts removeuser command to remove a user or machine from a group. It is meaningful only for groups, but a value must always be set for it even on user and machine entries.

Each flag can take three possible types of values to enable a different set of users to issue the corresponding command:

A hyphen (-) designates the members of the system:administrators group and the entry's owner. For user entries, it designates the user in addition.
The lowercase version of the letter applies meaningfully to groups only, and designates members of the group in addition to the individuals designated by the hyphen.
The uppercase version of the letter designates everyone.

For example, the flags SOmar on a group entry indicate that anyone can examine the group's entry and display the groups that it owns, and that only the group's members can display, add, or remove its members.

The default privacy flags for user and machine entries are S----, meaning that anyone can display the entry. The ability to perform any other functions is restricted to members of the system:administrators group and the entry's owner (as well as the user for a user entry).

The default privacy flags for group entries are S-M--, meaning that all users can display the entry and the members of the group, but only the entry owner and members of the system:administrators group can perform other functions.

group quota

The number of additional groups the user is allowed to create. The pts createuser command sets it to 20 for both users and machines, but it has no meaningful interpretation for a machine, because it is not possible to authenticate as a machine. Similarly, it has no meaning in group entries and the pts creategroup command sets it to 0 (zero); do not change this value.

Examples

The following example displays the user entry for terry and the machine entry 158.12.105.44.

   % pts examine terry 158.12.105.44
   Name: terry, id: 1045, owner: system:administrators, creator: admin, 
     membership: 9, flags: S----, group quota: 15.
   Name: 158.12.105.44, id: 5151, owner: system:administrators, 
     creator: byu, membership: 1, flags: S----, group quota: 20.

The following example displays the entries for the AFS groups with GIDs -673 and -674.

   % pts examine -673 -674
   Name: terry:friends, id: -673, owner: terry, creator: terry, 
     membership: 5, flags: S-M--, group quota: 0.
   Name: smith:colleagues, id: -674, owner: smith, creator: smith, 
     membership: 14, flags: SOM--, group quota: 0.

Privilege Required

The required privilege depends on the setting of the first privacy flag in the Protection Database entry of each entry specified by the -nameorid argument:

If it is lowercase s, members of the system:administrators group and the user associated with a user entry can examine it, and only members of the system:administrators group can examine a machine or group entry.
If it is uppercase S, anyone who can access the cell's database server machines can examine the entry.

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