How Access Rights Are Assigned and Changed

When you create an NIS+ object, NIS+ assigns that object a default set of access rights for the owner and group classes. By default, the owner is the NIS+ principal who creates the object. The default group is the group named in the NIS_GROUP environment variable. (See "Default Access Rights" for details.)

Specifying Different Default Rights

NIS+ provides two different ways to change the default rights that are automatically assigned to an NIS+ object when it is created.

• The NIS_DEFAULTS environment variable. NIS_DEFAULTS stores a set of security-related default values, one of which is access rights. These default access rights are the ones automatically assigned to an object when it is created. (See "Displaying NIS+ Defaults--The nisdefaults Command" for details.)

  If the value of the NIS_DEFAULTS environment variable is changed, objects created after the change are assigned the new values. However, previously created objects are not affected.

• The -D option, which is available with several NIS+ commands. When you use the -D option as part of the command to create an NIS+ object, it overrides the default rights specified by the NIS_DEFAULTS environment variable and allows you to explicitly specify an initial set of rights for that object. (See "Specifying Nondefault Security Values at Creation Time" for details.)

Changing Access Rights to an Existing Object

When an NIS+ object is created, it comes into existence with a default set of access rights (from either the NIS_DEFAULTS environment variable or as specified with the -D option). These default rights can be changed with the

• nischmod command

• nistbladm command for table columns