ACUA Overview
ACUA is a software package designed to facilitate the administration of user accounts and the enforcement of access restrictions on a Linux system. ACUA is most often used on systems that host modem pools such as:
- ISPs
- BBSs
- school dial-ups
- business dial-ups
However if you have a close look at ACUA you'll find that you don't need to have a modem pool to make use of it. Here is an overview of the functionality provided by the package:
Access Control
- Temporarily "freezing" accounts - acua lock, acua unLock.
- E-Mailing users to explain why they were kicked off the system - ExplainBoot.
- Warning users when their time is almost up - WarnBoot.
- Warning users (via email) when their account/subscription will be expired soon - WarnExpire.
- Booting users who have been idle too long - IdleBoot.
- Enforcement of accounting-period time limits (i.e. time per day, time per month).
- Enforcement of session time limits.
- Distinct time limits that apply only to certain weekdays and times - TimeClass.
- Optionally, time can be deducted only when the system is busy - SmartTime.
- Optionally, time limits can be enforced only when the system is busy - SmartBoot.
- Optionally, at most n users may be kicked off the system per minute - MaxKick.
- User priorities.
- User priorities may be mapped to CPU priorities (i.e. niceness).
- Lower-priority users are kicked off instead of higher-priority users.
- Priority 0 users can be kicked off even when they have time left!
- Enforcing data transfer limits.
- Accounting period and per-session limits.
- Separate limits can be placed on:
- Total bytes transferred
- Bytes uploaded
- Bytes downloaded
User Administration
- Automatic deletion of accounts.
- Based on preset expiration date.
- Based on the time since last login.
- Subscriptions (temporarily increased access) - acua subscribe, acua unSubscribe.
- User-created accounts with call-back verification - acua_verify.
- Specific users can be banned from the system temporarily or indefinitely - acua ban.
Information Reporting
Miscellaneous Utility Programs
Robert Davidson
Last modified: Thu Mar 5 21:53:03 CST 1998