Disabled users - why?

security Supervisor (4.x - 6.x)
1

I have had some users who for no apparent reason are being “disabled” in BO4.1.3. They swear to me that they log in fine one day, and the next day they can not.

Supervisor, of course, tells me nothing. The user simply has the check box “Disable Login” checked on. I clear it and the user has no problem.

I can look at the database and see something unusual going on, though. The OBJ_M_ACTOR record for this user has an M_ACTOR_N_ENDING value of 6810004. This was zero when we created the user; why has its value changed and what does its new value mean? The BO tech web site lists the following possible values for ENDING:

0 Password never expire
1 Change password at next login

800,000,000 Password expiration date

A value of 6,810,004 is undefined, then.

Also, the ACTOR record has an M_ACTOR_N_STATUS value of 136. Normally this is 9 when our users are created. This field can have the following values, in any combination:

BOSAS_ENABLED 1,
BOSAS_LOCKED 2,
BOSAS_OFFLINEPREVENT 4,
BOSAS_CANNOTCHANGEPWD 8,
BOSAS_REALTIMESECU 32,
BOSAS_CANNOTDELETEDOC 64

So our users normally have BOSAS_CANNOTCHANGEPWD (8) + BOSAS_ENABLED (1). Why has this value changed to 136 (which would appear to be 128 + 8 – but no definition is given for a value beyond 64)?

By the way, when I clear the Disabled Login check box in Supervisor, both STATUS and ENDING return to their correct values (9 and 0, respectively).

What’s going on here?

Erich Hurst
IQDC Systems Analyst
Compaq Computer Corporation

Listserv Archives (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

2

Hi

It happened to us too and users were complaining that thier userid’s were getting disabled. I called tech support and I found that there is a bug in Business Objects. Having Passwords that are 8 charecters in length is a problem. Please try assigning passwords other than 8 charecters.

Thank You
Radhika

Listserv Archives (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

3

The 127 is added to show that a user was disqualified by entering their password wrong 3 times. If your users are not doing this, then maybe someone else is trying to log into BusinessObjects as them.

When you reset the login in Supervisor, they are going back to a ‘can log in’ state.

If you want to get rid of this 4.1 feature, you can do it by setting the value of
OBJ_M_GENPAR
where
M_GENPAR_N_ID=117
set the value of
M_GENPAR_N_VALUE
to 0

This tells it to ignore the number in the M_GENPAR_C_LABEL column, which holds the value of the number of times that people are allowed to log in, before they are locked out.

Tom Tobin
Program Manager
Web Products, Business Objects

If you are worried about other people trying to login as users, then check the middleware logs on the server. They are the only trace of people connecting to the repository.
I think that the diagrams on http://tech.busobj.com/technotes4/repo40/ are a bit out of date. Tech support are updating their information architecture at the moment.

I have had some users who for no apparent reason are being “disabled” in BO4.1.3. They swear to me that they log in fine one day, and the next day they can not.
.
.
So our users normally have BOSAS_CANNOTCHANGEPWD (8) + BOSAS_ENABLED (1). Why has this value changed to 136 (which would appear to be 128 + 8 – but no definition is given for a value beyond 64)?

Listserv Archives (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

4

A lister wrote “I called tech support and I found that there is a bug in Business Objects. Having Passwords that are 8 charecters in length is a problem.”

I remember hearing this was an issue in earlier 4.1.X releases, but thought it had been resolved by 4.1.3. Anyone else with 4.1.3 still experiencing this problem?

David

Listserv Archives (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

5

Thanks to Tom Tobin for explaining the M_ACTOR_N_STATUS = 128. And I think I know now why the M_ACTOR_N_ENDING is getting set to 6810004. Well, I know part of the reason why.

I think the problem with ENDING is in converting a BO3.1 repository to BO4.1. When I look at a repository that has been converted from BO3.1 to BO4.1, all of the users have an M_ACTOR_N_ENDING value of 6810004, and an M_ACTOR_N_CNTDOWN value of (in one case it was 7331536, in another it was 8282368). All of the other fields look fine. Newly created users (using Supervisor) such as the general supervisor, do not have this problem.

What impact do these ENDING and CNTDOWN values have when a user logs in to BO?

By the way, I am using BO4.1.3 (although our users are using BO4.1.2) and Oracle 7.3.

Erich Hurst
IQDC Systems Analyst
Compaq Computer Corporation

Listserv Archives (BOB member since 2002-06-25)