perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Andrew Lake <>]

Hi all,

As a follow-up to this we tested and uploaded a new Toolkit RPM with a fix 
for this overnight (version 3.4-26). If you have automatic updates enabled 
(i.e. you did not explicitly disable automatic updates after updating to 
3.4), you may already have it or will sometime later today. Otherwise, you 
can run yum update to get it. 

It corrects an issue where non-root users from your 3.3 installations that 
were allowed to login to the web interface, were not migrated properly and 
could not login to the web interface post-3.4 upgrade. Some of you may have 
simply recreated the user(s) or created a new user already, which is fine and 
those accounts will continue to work. This update should both migrate users 
for people that upgrade from 3.3 in the future and those that already 
upgraded from 3.4 but had missing accounts. Just to remind everyone again, 
you will NOT be able to login as root to the web interface, this is very 
intentional and follow the prompts you receive at shell login to create a new 
non-root user. Sorry for any inconvenience this caused anyone and thanks to 
those that reported it .

Thanks,
Andy


On Oct 8, 2014, at 4:36 PM, Andrew Lake 
<>
 wrote:

> Hi Peter,
> 
> Thanks for the note. The situation you describe where a non-root user is 
> not properly getting added to the 'psadmin' group to administer the 
> interface is indeed NOT expected behavior. We have reviewed the script and 
> are testing a fix now. We will let everyone know when it's available. In 
> the meantime, the steps Peter outlined to remove and re-add the user is an 
> easy way around it if you think you have run into this issue.
> 
> Just to recap though, a number of users have reported getting the prompt 
> when only root users can get at the interface. Getting the prompt IS 
> expected behavior in that case.
> 
> Sorry for the inconvenience and we'll hopefully have a fix soon.
> 
> Thanks,
> Andy
> 
> On Oct 8, 2014, at 3:24 PM, Peter Gutierrez 
> <>
>  wrote:
> 
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>> In another thread on 10/08/2014 02:57 PM, Andrew Lake wrote:
>>> - It is intentional that you cannot login as root to the web interface
>>> and you are prompted at login to create a non-root user that can. We
>>> did this for security purposes. You can see this in our release notes
>>> and  upgrade notes: 
>>> http://docs.perfsonar.net/manage_update.html#special-upgrade-notes. 
>>> There's a lot of changes in this release so its easy to miss.
>>> 
>> 
>> and in http://docs.perfsonar.net/manage_update.html#special-upgrade-notes
>> 
>> When you upgrade from a version of the software older than version 3.4,
>> you may be asked to create a new user to login to the web interface. This
>> is because any user in wheel (e.g. root) is no longer allowed to access
>> the web interface. Given this new constraint, if none of your existing
>> users can login to the web interface you will be prompted to create a new
>> one the first time you login as root. See Managing Users for more 
>> information.
>> 
>> 
>> My experience with one upgrade install is that I did have a non-root user
>> account that I frequently used to access the web interface on the 3.3.2
>> box, but I could not login to the web administrator interface post-install
>> with that user/password.
>> 
>> I had to run /opt/perfsonar_ps/toolkit/scripts/nptoolkit-configure.py,
>> delete that user, and then add that user, and answer yes to the "Should
>> this user be able to login to the web interface?" prompt.
>> 
>> After that, I was able to use that account to login to the web interface.
>> 
>> PeterG
>> 
>> - -- 
>> Peter Gutierrez   IT/Network Services  U. Massachusetts Amherst
>> Voice: 413 545 1606   PGP: 0xE1668A41      
>> 
>> A: Because it interrupts the logical flow of discourse
>> Q: Why is top posting bad?
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>