7. The Virtual Server Administator

7.1 The Administrator account: admin

Upon creation of a new virtual server (and as of Virtfs 0.70.0), an administrator user is created. The group and user admin is added to the virtual system (not the main one). With admin rights, system administrators for that virtual server may tweak configuration files for their virtual server, and there is no worry that it will affect the main server.

7.2 Why?

Mainly for security. Giving root access to a client on a virtual service can lead to some harmful events. If there is an unknown break-in to the main server that can be done with root, this could be bad. To play things safe, it is best to give admin rights to the client.

Only you should know the root password.

7.3 The Administrator's access rights

Virtfs, by default, assigns full access permissions to the following directories to the new virtual server:

• /root - This will be the home directory for the admin account.
• /usr/local/* - This will be where admin may compile and install new applications.
• /home - admin will have full rights to all use directories.
• /etc - Certain files in this directory so that they may tweak their own servers to how they like.
• /var/ - Some directories in /var. This can be changed from /etc/virt.conf - the Admin Right section.

7.4 Changing the rights of the Administrator

Within the Virtfs configuration file, you will see a section called <Admin Rights>. Within this section, you can specify what files or directories should automatically obtain full admin access rights. Be very careful in doing this, as the whole point of creating the admin account is for security.

7.5 Disadvantages

There are some disadvantages, such as the admin will not be able to add/remove a user or group. These things should go by the root user, anyhow.