[Theforum] Re: Monkey Groups (was: Summary of entire discussion)

[Ron Dorman]

Martin wrote:

>
> On Thursday, April 25, 2002, at 12:04  am, A. Erickson wrote:
>
>>> Here's another way of thinking about it. You could view 'root access'
>>> in this context as 'root access to the *organisation*' - the power to
>>> do anything to the organisation.
>>
>>
>> Well, when I say 'root access', I mean 'root access'. I don't expect
>> everyone on the steering committee to be granted root access.
>
>
> No, I would expect everyone with root access to be a member of
> MonkeyRun. If you're not part of the group with the job of maintaining
> servers, why do you have root access to production boxes?
>
> Even if your main job is CF/db/whatever, if you need root access
> you should also be part of the server admin group, so you know
> about and have an input into any upcoming changes.

Something else to consider, with root access on *nix servers, a wrong
keystroke or two can kill a server before the stroker can say "O. S...".
 It has been mentioned that "levels" of access need to be determined and
a group "monkey run" be formed to handle seting up security and
maintaining access to the servers.

root access is not required for many (or most) of the things to be done
routinely.  Access is not an all or nothing situation.  We need time to
define and set up good security/access schemes to support evolt.org
operations while protecting the servers (and the people doing the admining).

"root access" seems to be used in general reference to being able to do
required tasks.  Let's understand what the term really means in respect
to our servers and begin defining what level of access is required to
perform each task.

Ron D.