Infrastructure/challenges

Background

This page provides a note pad for observations from the process of building the NLPL infrastructure.

Collaborative Ownership

Access control via Un*x file groups every now and again gets in the way. The UiO group management interface only applies to local accounts, i.e. the Notur accounts of non-UiO NLPL users need to be added manually to the hpc-nlpl group by USIT staff.

Making sure that files and directories have the right set of permissions, typically including group write permissions (to the right group), is at times challenging. Only the file owner can update its permissions, so that mixed-owner collections of files may require action by multiple people (or system administrator privileges).

When an account expires (because a team member has left the project), file ownership remains unchanged; this becomes apparent as numerical user ids showing up instead of actuall user names. In principle, we should design a succession mechanism—e.g. a table of triples: old user id, successor id, file system pattern—that could be applied regularly via cron(8).