RATS Glossary:

This glossary is intended to define certain RATS-isms, as well as to clarify some jargon bleed.

Herd: As far as the software and the configuration file is concerned, a herd is treated as if it were a role. For practical purposes the sysadmin needs to know more details. A herd is in actuality a way to add a sub-role that is a more specific descriptor of that persons role. A good illustrative example is the role GUEST. You do not want all guests of Rutgers University to be allowed to make accounts on your machine. Thus there is a herd you can add a GUEST to in order to restrict access to a machine for guests. For example, the RCI cluster in new brunswick has a herd available called NB_RCI_GUEST that they can add and remove people from. By making guest accounts require a role of both GUEST and NB_RCI_GUESTS, they now only let guest status people who have been added to the proper herd to have an account on their machine. Since only a select group of people can add people to the NB_RCI_GUESTS herd, you don't have to open up access to your machine for all guests, and you don't have to create the guest accounts by hand anymore.

Herd Tool: This is what you use to add/remove users from a herd. It is restricted by an ACL. You can find the tool here.

PDB: The PDB is the People Data Base. It is a repository of demographic information about people at Rutgers. As far as account creation goes, it is the replacement for whitepages.  At the moment, it doesn't get updates any faster than whitepages did.

"Person" or "real person": You may think that if they are standing in front of you and you can touch them that they are a  person. In the world of RATS, you'd be wrong.  A person in this context means a Rutgers Community Participant or in other terms, one of the people in the People Database. We don't want to rain on your metaphysical parade, but as far as RATS is concerned if you are not in the PDB, you aren't a real person. If you email us about a user, and we ask "are they a real person", this is usually a hint that you should let us know in the first message if you looked them up in the privileged view.

Privileged view: This  is like the Rutgers on-line directory. Except it has a LOT more information on the person, and a LOT less people are allowed to look at it. It is very useful in determining if a problem with an account being created is a problem with your config file, the software, or the person's data. The privileged view shows people regardless of their disclosure setting.

Role: Every active person in the pdb has a role attached to them. The roles are as follows: ADMIT COMING, ALUMNI, FACULTY, FORMER STUDENT, GUEST, PROGRAM, STAFF, STUDENT, SUMMER STUDENT, and STUDENT WORKER. ADMIT COMING represents students who are going to attend the university. ALUMNI are those who have graduated with a degree. FACULTY are employees who teach. FORMER STUDENT represents students that have left without getting a degree. GUEST represents guests of the university. PROGRAM represents fake people for support of things like departments and affiliated organizations and programs. STAFF represents employees who do not teach. STUDENT represents registered students with paid bills. SUMMER STUDENT is a someone registered for summer session. STUDENT WORKER represents type 5 employees, and since the problem with distinguishing type4 vs type5 is a payroll problem and we still get the feed from there, don't trust this anymore than you used to trust someone's type4/5 status in the past. As far as account creation goes,   you probably want to always pair the guest role with a herd, you probably don't want to rely on STUDENT WORKER to be an accurate description and should probably use a herd instead, PROGRAM should never be included as a valid type for accounts created through rats.cgi.

Superuser: In reference to the group tool, those in the superuser list can give people the ability to add and remove people to the list of those who can add and remove people from a group.
 

If you think something should be added to the glossary, send the suggestion to rats_support@email.