Preface

User Accounts, Printers, and Mail Administration contains procedures for setting up and administering users and groups, user environments, printers, and electronic mail services. It also contains conceptual and planning information about the LP print service and electronic mail services.

This book assumes that you have already installed SunOS^(TM) 5.x software, and have set up any networking software that you plan to use. The SunOS 5.x operating system is part of the Solaris^(TM) 2.x product family, which also includes numerous bundled utilities and OpenWindows^(TM) Version 3.x. The SunOS 5.x operating system is compliant with AT&T's System V, Release 4 operating system.

About Task Orientation

User Accounts, Printers, and Mail Administration is divided into three parts. Part I, "User Accounts," and Part II, "Printing," are written as task-oriented chapters. A task orientation lets you choose the best way to obtain the information you need. Each task-oriented chapter separates conceptual information from the task's instructions and contains these two main sections:

• About section - Provides background information related to the tasks.
• Instructions section - Provides step-by-step instructions that you need to perform each task, along with examples of the input and output associated with the task.

If necessary, a task-oriented chapter also includes this section:

• Reference section - Provides additional material that you may need to perform a task.

Depending on how much background information you may need to accomplish a task, you can either read the discussions in the About sections or go directly to the steps for the tasks in the Instructions sections. You also may be referred to additional information in the Reference sections (if any), which will help you perform the tasks.

Part III, "Mail," is written in a more traditional, linear sequence. Descriptions of the underlying concepts of electronic mail services are described in two chapters. Understanding how these services work can help you troubleshoot problems. If you are familiar with how electronic mail services work, you can turn directly to the chapter that describes setup and administration procedures, along with related concepts.

Who Should Use This Book

This book is written for system administrators who have a basic working knowledge of the SunOS 5.x operating system, and who are familiar with windowing environments, including mouse- and menu-driven applications. It explains system administration concepts for administrators at all levels of expertise.

How This Book Is Organized

This book is organized into three parts and four appendixes.

Part 1, User Accounts

Chapter 1, "Setting Up User Accounts and Groups," explains how to add, delete, and modify user accounts and how to assign passwords. It also explains how to create new groups and how to add, delete, and modify group accounts.

Chapter 2, "Administering User Accounts and Groups," explains how to create home directories, set up the user's default environment with initialization files, and set up a mail account (when mail service is already set up and running).

Part 2, Printing

Chapter 3, "Setting Up Printers," describes the tasks for setting up basic printing services using the Printer Manager, an Administration Tool application.

Chapter 4, "Routine Printer Administration," describes the tasks for administering printing services after printers are installed and set up.

Chapter 5, "Managing Character Sets, Filters, Forms, and Fonts," describes additional printer-specific tasks, like setting up and administering print wheels, filters, forms, and fonts.

Chapter 6, "Setting Printing Policies," describes the tasks for setting print policy, like whether banner pages print.

Chapter 7, "Troubleshooting Printing Problems," describes how to troubleshoot problems that may occur when setting up or maintaining printing services.

Part 3, Mail

Chapter 8, "Understanding Mail Services," describes what the mail service does, the programs it uses, and how it works.

Chapter 9, "Setting Up and Administering Mail Services," describes several typical mail scenarios and details the tasks for setting up mail for each scenario. It also provides information about how to troubleshoot a mail installation and how to administer mail services.

Appendixes

Appendix A, "Setting Up Printer Services Using the Command-Line Interface," describes the tasks for setting up basic printing services using the LP print service's command-line interface.

Appendix B, "Understanding and Customizing the LP Print Service,"

describes what the LP print service does, how it works, and the directory structure of the LP print service commands. It also explains how to adjust printer port characteristics, add entries to the terminfo database, write an interface program, and provide new print filters and forms.

Appendix C, "Customizing sendmail Configuration Files," explains the structure and syntax of the sendmail.main.cf configuration file and how to customize it for more complex mail environments.

Appendix D, "Bibliography," provides a list of published books on system administration that you can use to supplement the information in the system administration documentation set.

"Glossary," lists words and phrases used in this book, and their definitions.

Related Books

If you need to install system software, or set up and configure systems on a network, refer to SPARC: Installing Solaris Software and x86: Installing Solaris Software.

If you are an experienced SunOS 4.1 system administrator, refer to the Solaris 1.x to Solaris 2.x Transition Guide for information about how to make the transition from administering SunOS 4.1 systems to administering SunOS 5.x systems.

For information about basic operating system commands and shells, see the Solaris User's Guide.

For quick-reference information about system administration commands, see the Solaris Advanced User's Guide.

User Accounts, Printers, and Mail Administration is part of the system administration documentation set. Cross-references in the text refer you to the appropriate book.

• Peripherals Administration
• Name Services Administration Guide
• NFS Administration Guide
• Security, Performance, and Accounting Administration
• TCP/IP Network Administration Guide

What Typographic Changes and Symbols Mean

The following table describes the typographic conventions in this book.

Table P-1

Typeface or Symbol	Meaning	Example
AaBbCc123	The names of commands, files, and directories; on-screen computer output	Edit your .login file. Use ls -a to list all files. system% You have mail
AaBbCc123	What you type, contrasted with on-screen computer output	system% su password:
AaBbCc123	Command-line "placeholder": replace with a real name or value	To delete a file, type rm filename.
AaBbCc123	Book titles, new words or terms, or words to be emphasized	Read Chapter 6 in User's Guide. These are called class options. You must be root to do this.
%	UNIX C shell prompt	system%
$	UNIX Bourne or Korn shell prompt	system$
#	Superuser prompt, either shell	system#
SELECT	By default, the left mouse button	Click SELECT on the desired menu choice.
ADJUST	By default, the middle mouse button	Click ADJUST on each entry.
MENU	By default, the right mouse button	Press MENU on the desired menu button.

For steps, press Return only when instructed to do so, even if the text breaks at the end of the line, as shown in this example:

1. Type pmadm -a -p tcp -s lpd -i root -m 'nlsadmin -o
  /var/spool/lp/fifos/listenBSD -A '\xuniversal_address'' -v
  'nlsadmin -V' and press Return.

For code examples, press Return at the end of a line. If the line ends with a backslash (\), do not press Return, because the example is continued on the line below.

# pmadm -a -p tcp -s lpd -i root -m 'nlsadmin -o \ /var/spool/lp/fifos/listenBSD -A \ '\x000202038194180e0000000000000000'' -v 'nlsadmin -V'

When following steps or using examples, be sure to type double quotation marks ("), left single quotation marks (`), and right single quotation marks (') exactly as shown.