Local user authentication

Local user authentication uses local operating system users, where the root user acts as the system administrator. Users cannot log in to the Web Portal, but can ssh into nodes that are provisioned with Platform Cluster Manager Community Edition. Only a system administrator can log in to the Web Portal and assign other users to become a system administrator.

In Platform Cluster Manager Community Edition you can manage users and Web Portal administrators. The rules for Web Portal administrators are:
  • Only user accounts that include a user name and password are listed as an available user account.
  • User accounts that do not include a password are not displayed in the Web Portal and cannot be added as an administrator.
  • The pcmadmin operating system user does not appear in the Web Portal. The system administrator should not remove the pcmadmin user from the operating system, because the pcmadmin user is used as the database administrator and as the EGO administrator.
  • The root user is a Web Portal administrator that is not listed.

In Platform Cluster Manager Community Edition, the local operating system user names and passwords that are defined on the management node are used across all nodes in the system.

Add local users

To add local non-root users:
  1. Create an operating system user on the management node.
  2. Synchronize the new user name and password across the system with the updatenode command.
    Synchronizing the new user name and password across the system updates the following system files on all compute nodes:
    • /etc/passwd
    • /etc/shadow
    • /etc/group

Remove local users

To remove non-root users on Linux, you must remove the user from the management node and then remove the user from the compute nodes.

To remove the user from the compute nodes, use the xdsh command. For example:
xdsh compute000-compute010 'userdel user1'