[Bio-Linux] Bio-Linux 5.0 pre-release announcement

[Stewart Houten]

Hi Nathan,

Good to hear from you.

On Nov 26, 2008, Nathan S. Watson-Haigh <nhaigh at sheffield.ac.uk> wrote:
> A comment about default user setup.
> 
> Bio-Linux 5 automatically gives sudo rights to the initial user entered
> during installation....this may or may not be desired for several reasons.
> Could the installation be changed to setup a manager account automatically
> with sudo rights and then have the person doing the install, choose a
> password for the manager and then setup a normal user account (without sudo
> rights)?

This probably could be achieved but for several reasons we decided to
fit our requirements to the default Ubuntu/ubiquity setup.  Our
decision was motivated by the fact that the person installing the
computer is most likely the owner or dedicated administrator of the
machine and after installing the first thing they will need to do is
customise the machine, restore backups, add user accounts, setup
printers, nfs etc.  We thought the default Ubuntu approach served this
need very well.

Also modifying the installer code (ubiquity) to provide a dialog
allowing you to set a manager password is not really an option as the
code is not easy to fathom (it is something we considered for another
reason) and it would likely be tricky to maintain during future
updates to the image.  There are other ways around this but we wanted
to keep things simple where possible.

Unfortunately when you installed you didn't have a copy of our
Installation Guide in front of you and in this we have tried (in
brief) to address the account setup process and make a suggestion that
this admin account be set up with the name manager.  If you would like
to take a look at this it is now in a temporary location on the web
here:

http://nebc.nox.ac.uk/bio-linux5/Bio-Linux5_InstallationGuide.pdf

Any comments on this document would also be welcome.

Cheers,
Stewart