Re: User account

[Hans-Albert Schneider]

>>>>> "Andrew" == Andrew  <address@hidden> writes:

    Andrew> Hi, I am new to gnats but experienced with
    Andrew> ClearQuest. Now we are going to use GNATS 4.0. I need
    Andrew> your help on these questions:

    Andrew> 1, When I install the GNATS into our LINUX server (as
    Andrew> GNATS server), I followed the instruction and use the
    Andrew> user "gnats", that owns all the gnats related files
    Andrew> and database. Should I now create general user
    Andrew> accounts for every our user?

No.  The GNATS user database (.../gnats-adm/gnatsd.access) has
nothing to do with the UNIX user database (/etc/passwd, NIS,
LDAP, or whatever).

    Andrew> I want that if a person from our network to login to
    Andrew> the GNATS, at the first login, it will automatically
    Andrew> create the user account with the passwd by users'
    Andrew> choice. Does anyone have the solution to do that?
    Andrew> Please give me detailed instructions.

I have no solution to this, but I do have some security concerns.
You see, "my" GNATS (in the office) lives in a large, world-wide
intranet, and I don't know who else is in (and I doubt that there
is anyone in the firm who knows exactly), or whether somebody got
unauthorized access maybe on the other side of the globe.

    Andrew> 2, The STATES.  How can I add or delete the states

Edit file your-database/gnats-adm/states.  The first state is the
default state for incoming PRs (i.e., a new PR gets this state
automatically if it dies not yet bear one), and the last state
must be of type closed.  See the comments in that file for
details; the manual seems to be still at 3.1xx with respect to
it.

    Andrew> and build the state-change logic?

I am not sure what you mean.  The default dbconfig file logs any
change to the state of a PR, forced by

    on-change {
        # Add Audit-Trail entries when this field changes.
        add-audit-trail
        # Require that a reason be supplied when this field is edited.
        require-change-reason
    }

It also sets the "Closed-Date" if the new state has type
"closed", but the old one didn't (see the subsection starting
`on-change "State[type]==\"closed\"" ', just below the above).

You can define rules of your own, probably using state-types of
your own (I expect they are simply defined by appearing in the
states file).

    Andrew> is there any interface to do that?

You mean a program?  I am not aware of one.  Just use your
favorite text editor.

    Andrew> I noticed that the file
    Andrew> "/usr/local/com/gnatsdb/gnats-adm/states" contains
    Andrew> all states, but where is the interface to change it,
    Andrew> that means how to easily customize the gnats states
    Andrew> to my requirement.

Each database has such a file.  Just edit it; there are a lot of
comments in it describing the format.

GNATS can manage multiple databases; e.g., we used one for each
software project, with one category per program or tool in the
respective project.  (Due to reorganization, we are currently
splitting this into two installations.)  All configuration is per
database (hmm, well, the daemon listens on the same port for all
databases :-).

    Andrew> 3, Where can I find the gnats customization details,

In file .../gnats-adm/dbconfig.

    Andrew> e.g. how to customize the gnats web page items?

Gnatsweb is a separate tool and has its own documentation.
Create a file gnatsweb-site.pl in the same (CGI-) directory
whereh you place gnatsweb; an example is distributed with
gnatsweb.


BTW, the GNATS docu is available from the GNATS web pages
(http://www.gnu.org/software/gnats/); you should have got the
manual (at least its texinfo version) as part of the
distribution.


Hans-Albert

-- 
Hans-Albert Schneider
Munich, Germany
EMail: address@hidden