Contribute to the DSpace Development Fund
The newly established DSpace Development Fund supports the development of new features prioritized by DSpace Governance. For a list of planned features see the fund wiki page.
When a user registers an account for the purpose of subscribing to change notices, submitting content, or the like, DSpace creates an EPerson record in the database. Administrators can manipulate these records in several ways.
From the browser
- Login as an Administrator
- Sidemenu "Access Control" → "People"
- Browse or search for the account you wish to modify or delete.
To modify user permissions / group memberships:
- Login as an Administrator
- Sidemenu "Access Control" → "Groups"
- Edit the Group
- Search for the EPerson & add/remove them from that group.
To debug issues for a specific user, it's possible to login as (or "impersonate") that user account
On the backend, first you MUST enable the "assumelogin" feature. This feature is disabled by default. Update this setting in your local.cfg or dspace.cfg
# Required to use "Impersonate EPerson" feature # When enabled, a full Administrator can impersonate any other non-Administrative user webui.user.assumelogin = true
- Then, from the user interface, login as an Administrator
- Sidemenu "Access Control" → "People"
- Browse or search for the account you wish to login as
- Edit that User, and click the "Impersonate EPerson" button.
- You are now logged in as that user. You'll see an Impersonate icon/button in the header.
- You are able to temporarily manage any activities as that user.
- Once your are done, click the "Stop impersonating EPerson".
- Optionally, you may wish to disable this feature again in your local.cfg by setting the above configuration to "false" or commenting it out.
From the command line
The user
command
The dspace user
command adds, lists, modifies, and deletes EPerson records.
To create a new user account:
[dspace]/bin/dspace user --add --email jquser@example.com -g John -s User --password hiddensecret [dspace]/bin/dspace user --add --netid jquser --telephone 555-555-1234 --password hiddensecret
One of the options --email
is required to name the record. The complete options are: or --netid
-a | --add | required |
-m | email address | |
-n | --netid | "netid" (a username in an external system such as a directory – see Authentication Methods for details) |
-p | --password | a password for the account. Required. |
-g | --givenname | First or given name |
-s | --surname | Last or surname |
-t | --telephone | Telephone number |
-l | --language | Preferred language |
-c | --requireCertificate | Certificate required? See X.509 Authentication for details. |
To list accounts:
[dspace]/bin/dspace user --list
This simply lists some characteristics of each EPerson.
short | long | meaning |
---|---|---|
-L | --list | required |
To modify an account:
[dspace]/bin/dspace user --modify -m george@example.com
short | long | meaning |
---|---|---|
-M | --modify | required |
-m | identify the account by email address | |
-n | --netid | identify the account by netid |
-g | --givenname | First or given name |
-s | --surname | Last or surname |
-t | --telephone | telephone number |
-l | --language | preferred language |
-c | --requireCertificate | certificate required? |
-C | --canLogIn | is the account enabled or disabled? |
-i | --newEmail | set or change email address |
-I | --newNetid | set or change netid |
To delete an account:
[dspace]/bin/dspace user --delete -n martha
short | long | meaning |
---|---|---|
-d | --delete | required |
-m | identify the account by email address | |
-n | --netid | identify the account by netid |
The Groomer
This tool inspects all user accounts for several conditions.
short | long | meaning |
---|---|---|
-a | --aging | find accounts not logged in since a given date |
-u | --unsalted | find accounts not using salted password hashes |
-b | --before | date cutoff for --aging |
-d | --delete | delete disused accounts (used with --aging) |
Find accounts with unsalted passwords
Earlier versions of DSpace used an "unsalted hash" method to protect user passwords. Recent versions use a salted hash. You can find accounts which have never been converted to salted hashing:
[DSpace]/bin/dsrun org.dspace.eperson.Groomer -u
The output is a list of email addresses for matching accounts.
Find (and perhaps delete) disused accounts
You can list accounts which have not logged on since a given date:
[DSpace]/bin/dsrun org.dspace.eperson.Groomer -a -b 07/20/1969
The output is a tab-separated-value table of the EPerson ID, last login date, email address, netid, and full name for each matching account.
You can also have the tool delete matching accounts:
[DSpace]/bin/dsrun org.dspace.eperson.Groomer -a -b 07/20/1969 -d
Cryptographic properties
The cryptographic properties used for generating the salted hashes, to ensure encryption at rest for user passwords, can be found and adjusted in: