The elusive "password administrator"

One of the most frequent - if not the most frequent - reasons for users to call help desks and IT departments is forgotten or expired passwords. Many users have requested utilities or procedures from Novell to create a password administrator - someone who can reset a password, but has no other supervisory privileges.

Novell finally came through, with Password Management/Administration, a new feature in NetWare 5. But this won't work at all for NetWare 4 networks - and is evidently problematic in mixed NetWare 4 and 5 nets.

Novell has described, in a Novell AppNotes article by John Buckle, how a password change system could work:

developer.novell.de/research/appnotes/1997/septembe/03/index.htm

Plus, the company released source code to implement this, though it is unsupported. You can get it at:

developer.novell.com/support/sample/tids/cps12d/cps12d.htm

There are third-party help-desk tools that can be used to allow for password administrators. These are especially useful for NetWare 4 environments and mixed NetWare 4 and 5 environments, but they also add extra functionality to pure NetWare 5 networks. Among these are:

* NDSAdmin from DreamLAN Consulting:

www.dreamlan.com/ndsadmin.htm

* N4Pass from Darwin Collins (freeware):

www.novellfans.com/n4util.asp

But how about a utility that will let your users reset their own passwords? Will that save you and your staff some time? Find out more in the next newsletter.

Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. His most recent book is "Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Networks" published by SAMS. Dave's company, Virtual Quill, provides content services to network vendors: books, manuals, white papers, lectures and seminars, marketing, technical marketing and support documents. Virtual Quill provides "words to sell by..." Find out more at Virtual Quill or by e-mail at info@vquill.com

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Help Desk: Reinstalling NetWare service pack 5
Network World, 04/16/01