Validation Report, May 2012 I've been validating users since May 5, 2011. In the past year, I've done 369 validations (neat how that works out to an average of about 1 per day), of which 289 have logged in again to choose a shell after they were validated. I don't have numbers on how many of these folks come back more than once as validated users or if they become become regular users. At least we have a significant percentage of those requesting validation who do follow through and select a shell (approx. 78%). Since they asked for validation, this is perhaps expected. We do have some who ask to be validated, are validated, and never come back (these we show as "newly-validated"). What we don't know is if the additional steps of logging in again, changing the password, and selecting a shell are too much work for some people, or if they just forgot or decided the service wasn't what they wanted). Overall we have 958 validated accounts currently. We have 71 verified accounts, 2361 restricted shell accounts, and 258 accounts which are in a "newly-validated" status--have been validated but user did not log in again. We have 498 users with /var/mail files. We do currently allow un-validated users to access the conferencing system and party system, so they can try out more of the system. Kent3 responses total.
Here is a newbie report for what it's worth. I'm at the restricted shell stage, and it took me a small but not inconsiderable effort to get this far. I made two failed attempts, each time completing the registration dialog and reading the confirmation message saying an email had been sent. I'm fairly positive there was no slip-up on this side, but the finger link on the website told me nothing until I went back the third time. It's a good policy to provide the finger link. Many sites block that port and I wouldn't have thought of trying it myself. I'm also happy to see that restricted users have conference posting rights.
I had the same problem when I registered. I went through the process once, and received no email. The webpage finger utility allowed me to see right away that the registration had failed, so I filled the form a second time, and then I did receive the email. Now the account is validated.
We haven't totally figured out yet why newuser sometimes fails. Sometimes it's obvious, such as a bad e-mail address. The newuser program does a validity check on the e-mail address/domain and if it doesn't like what it sees, doesn't create the account. Thus, we have some assurance we have a real, valid e-mail address connected with the account. I suspect this may be the source of some of the un-obvious e-mail and account creation mysteries, too. Sometimes our password e-mail is tagged as spam on the user's side, so that may be a reason why it isn't received, although it is sent. Staff at grex don't have any way to tell what password was sent in that newuser e-mail so we can't send it again. In that case, we can reset the password, if the account exists. Unfortunately, about all we do in many cases such as when the home directory does not exist, is ask that the user to try running newuser again.
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