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Novell NetWare Account Creation NLM

Marek Fodor, Academic Computing Services, Edith Cowan University, 2 Bradford Street, Mount Lawley, WA 6050, Australia. Phone: +61-9-370-6142, Fax: +61-9-370-6100
Email: m.fodor@cowan.edu.au

To automate the creation of accounts on Novell NetWare servers, the COSA.NLM (Creation Of Student Accounts) was created. It can be used for both creation and modification of accounts using data sent from an authorised e-mail address.

Currently COSA can perform four operations:

Create new accounts
Remove accounts
Add an account to new groups
Remove an account from groups.

Data Input Structure

The body of the e-mail message accepted from the authorised e-mail address has the following structure:

START Command:Parameter1:Parameter2:Parameter3:Parameter4 Command:Parameter1:Parameter2:Parameter3:Parameter4 Command:Parameter1:Parameter2:Parameter3:Parameter4 ...

The format of each command is determined by the protocols described here.

Requirements

SMTP Gateway
Before COSA can be used on a Novell server, an SMTP mail gateway needs to be installed. We recommend using the Mercury suite of NLMs developed by David Harris.
MAKEUSERS Account
COSA logs into the server as user MAKEUSERS. This account must be manually created on the server and must:
- Have Workgroup Manager rights.
- Manage all groups that the accounts are to belong to.
COSA.INI File
The file COSA.INI must be placed into the SYSTEM directory of volume SYS. It contains the:
- Password for user MAKEUSERS (password=?????).
- Authorised e-mail address (AuthorizedHost=user@host).
- Time interval (in minutes) between checking for mail (SleepTime=30).
- Default groups for every new user (Groups=Group1, Group2, ..., Groupn).
- Comments (any line that starts with '#', ';', '[', ' ').

Notes

Please note that COSA does not create any new groups. Therefore you have to make sure that all necessary groups exist before loading COSA.

If an e-mail message to COSA is not sent from the authorised address, COSA does not process it and renames the message to "*.xxx". It is suggested that regular checks are made of MAKEUSERS' mail subdirectory to check from time to time.

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