Automatic JNOS Startup
Autostarting jnos is the method applied to provide jnos services as part of the booting process. If the computer is powered up, users may reasonably presume jnos is active, and the site does not necessarily need to be manned. Automatic restart can optionally be provided after jnos crash as well.
Jnos2.0 Distributed Aid
The “startnos" script is provided with the distribution as a pattern to be placed in rc.local. Going a step further, the startnos script may be extended and placed in rc.d to permit jnos not only to be started at boot time but also to be "service jnos start" and "service jnos restart" commands.
Midland MI-DRG Case study
One very interesting site is located near Midland Michigan, USA on a KBUNTU Linux platform. This site combines physically secure location, multiple administrators, local and remote sysop access, jnos user ID, and complex support services like weather images. What follows is the sysop description, John WB8RCR.
First of all, on thinking about it, perhaps hamgate.midland.ampr.org has something of an optimum situation. The hamgate is located behind two locked doors, with a 24 hour guard. The hospital is a public place, manned 24/7, so any member on the list can go to the guard to get the keys. Perhaps this is a better situation than most.
Because we may need any of a number of folks to do maintenance, we wanted things to be fairly simple. We felt that having access to a live console when someone arrives on site was more important than logon security, given the physical protection of the console, and any logon security would be greatly compromised by sharing a password among a large number of folks.
All the jnos files are owned by a jnos user. The /home/jnos user directory is used for support files ... the actual BBS is run from the /jnos tree. cron jobs for weather, propagation, motd updates, mail maintenance and backup are run from the jnos user's crontab.
The jnos user is set to automatically log on after 30 seconds. The .bashrc for the jnos user executes the startnos script. The startnos script checks whether jnos is running, and if not, starts it with sudo. Thus, the jnos user is logged on, but jnos runs with root privileges.
A maintainer visiting the site has merely to sudo ./startnos to start jnos, and if, because of some oversight, jnos is already running, the script will not start another copy. If the system is rebooted, jnos starts automatically after a few minutes. If jnos is already running, it is running on a console window, so a maintainer needing to do something else must merely open a new window and need not disturb the running jnos. If a user, thinking Windows, closes the jnos window, simply opening another terminal window will cause jnos to start.
For remote maintenance, we use iptables to redirect telnets to jnos, and ssh's to Linux. ssh login is ONLY permitted with a shared key ... password login is disabled. There are only a handful of folks with ssh keys. Each has their own usercode on Linux, and has the root password (which is long but easy to remember).