What's New in Managing Users and Groups?

This section describes new features for managing users and groups in the Solaris 9 release.

Solaris Management Console Tools Suite

The Solaris Management tools suite, available from the Solaris Management Console, enable you to manage all user and group features. For information on using the Solaris Management Console, see Chapter 2, Working With the Solaris^TM Management Console (Tasks). For information on performing specific user and group management tasks, see What You Can Do With Solaris User Management Tools.

Solaris Directory Services

You can manage user and group information in a LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) directory service with the iPlanet^TM Directory Server, as well as other LDAP directory servers. Managing user and group information is also available in the NIS, NIS+, or files environment.

For information on setting up LDAP, see System Administration Guide: Naming and Directory Services (DNS, NIS, and LDAP).

For information on managing users and groups with iPlanet Directory Server, see iPlanet Directory Server 5.1 Administrator's Guide at this http://docs.sun.com/db/doc/816-2670? location.

Managing Users and Resources With Projects

In the Solaris 9 release, users and groups can be members of a project, an identifier that indicates a workload component that can be used as the basis of system usage or resource allocation chargeback. Projects are part of the Solaris resource management feature that is used to manage system resources.

Users need to be a member of a project to successfully log in to a system running the Solaris 9 release. By default, users are a member of the group.staff project when the Solaris 9 release is installed and no other project information is configured.

User project information is stored in the /etc/project file, which can be stored on the local system (files), the NIS name service, or the LDAP directory service. You can use the Solaris Management Console to manage project information.

The /etc/project file must exist for users to log in successfully, but requires no administration if you are not using projects.

For more information on using or setting up projects, see “Projects and Tasks” in System Administration Guide: Resource Management and Network Services.