NAME

       normality - definition of what types of normalities different users may have.

SYNOPSIS

       /etc/normality

DESCRIPTION

       The  normality  configuration  file has a rather simple syntax, as shown in the diagram in
       the next section. Some things to remember  is  that  the  normality  file's  influence  is
       inversely  proportional  to  the  user's  cluefulness  and  that, in certain cirumstances,
       modification of the normality file can and will be considered immoral.

NORMALITY GRAMMAR

       <normality file> := <normality file> <line> |
                           ;
       <line> := <normality type> ': ' <userlist> |
                 <normality type> '! ' <userlist> |
                 <normality type> '= ' <normality tags> |
                 <comment>
       <normality type> := [A-Z][a-zA-Z0-9]+
       <userlist> := <username> ', ' <userlist> ';0 |
                     <username> ';0
       <normality tags> := <normality tag> ', ' <normality tags> ';0 |
                           <normality tag> ';0
       <normality tag> := 'marriage' |
                          'love-relation' |
                          'nice-job' |
                          'money' |
                          'spare-time' |
                          'friends' |
                          'no-pager' |
                          'vacation'
       <comment> := '#' .* '0

SEMANTICS

       It is expected that you specify  all  normality  types  before  you  start  assigning  (or
       disassigning)  users to (or from) them. That is so the system can do an easier consistency
       check of the specification.

       Let's say that we have a system with three normality types, foo, bar and  gazonk  and  two
       users, cucumber and onion.

       Now, a line like "foo! onion;" would exclude onion from having any of the real-life things
       specified by the foo type, even if that (or those)  things  appear  in  another  normality
       type.  So,  the  disallow  syntax  overrides  the  allow  syntax  (specified  by  "<type>:
       <username>...").

       There is always an implicit type named ``all'', that contains all normality tags.

       For all system administrators, you have an implicit rule, "all!  asr".

EXAMPLES

       # Normality file for a sad system
       # Our users are onion, cucumber, jdoe, jrl and washu
       animetype= love-relation, nice-job, friends, spare-time;
       notworst= love-relation, nice-job, friends;
       sysadm= friends;
       # All normality types we will use are declared
       # Now let's do the magic stuff...
       all: jdoe, jrl;
       animetype: washu;
       sysadm: cucumber;
       all! onion;
       # Now, this is fairly easy, OK?

WARNINGS AND BUGS

       This file messes with the real world, so a bit of caution is recommended.  Newer  versions
       of the chastise(3) library function modifies this file on-the-fly.

       Has  a tendecy to create small discontinuities in the velvet of reality whenever there are
       syntax errors in the normality file.

AUTHOR

       This sick idea was put down in *roff format by Ingvar Mattsson, as a contribution  to  the
       alt.sysadmin.recovery man page collection.