Administering privilege

Administering privilege

Privilege is the ability to override system restrictions on the actions of users. All operating systems provide for the exercise of special privilege under certain conditions, to perform certain sensitive system operations. Sensitive system operations affect the configuration of the system or its availability to the user community it serves.

Most users cannot, for example, execute commands affecting the hardware or software configuration of the system. Activities such as mounting and checking filesystems, adding users, modifying user profiles, adding and removing peripherals, installing application software, password administration, and administration of the user terminal lines, are restricted to certain users.

This chapter discusses the traditional UNIX privilege model , and contrasts it with the privilege model used in this release of UnixWare. This chapter also contains procedures on how to administer privilege on your system.