Information about Userids in the Sponsors Data

On an AssignTo line you list a number of userids.

To help detect errors, id numbers need to be associated with userids. This can be done directly in the AssignTo line as in

      AssignTo: sgamgee:02020202

Or it can be done in the Userids: section at the top of the file.

This can and has helped detect errors when dealing with userids which differ only in a contained number (b52baggins versus b25baggins), and in spelling correction. (Especially for userids which contain "ei" or "ie"?).

The easiest way to determine the number to use is to use the userinfo userid command; the number which must be used will be shown as the Id  Number: value in the output. Perhaps see more information on the userinfo command and notes about creating new userids.

Technically, the appropriate id number will be in the entry in /software/accounts-userids/data/Userids on the machine cs-xh-admin.cs.private.uwaterloo.ca that contains (in the second colon-separated field) the userid of interest. The appropriate id will be the first (comma-separated) value in the first (colon-separated) field of that entry. It will be a student id, employee id, HR id, employee id, or WatIAM "P-number", in that order. In fact, you will see other obscure values listed too. But only the first one can be used. If you omit that id, however, the sponsor_resources will actually tell you what value to use, and in fact the resources will be allocated. If you use an incorrect value (for example an employee id for a user who has a student id), you will be told what the correct value will be, and an error will be generated and the resources will NOT be allocated.

This suggests that, when a new user is in the process of being created, and you know that their WatIAM "P-number" will soon be superseded by an employee or student id, that the warning messages should be tolerated until the superseding number is assigned.

As a further caveat, it is actually the case that, although the id number must be specified, the userid can be replaced with "*".

      AssignTo: *:02020202

That facility was historically used when processing registrar's data.

-- AdrianPepper - 21 Jul 2011