[cpx] CPX design goals, terms, and roles

[Scott Wiersdorf <scottw@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Design Goals

The first CPX release was designed primarily to help resellers whose
primary business is subhosting. Functions that were once limited only
to the server administrator, such as adding new users, managing email
addresses, etc. are now available to domain administrators. A side
effect of this stance is that VPS v2 accounts with only one domain on
them will also have a control panel.

Subsequent releases will focus more on the server administrator,
allowing more control over the server setup itself, including software
installation from ports and vinstalls, configuring server settings,
general enhancements to existing functionality, and extending many of
the domain admin privileges to end users as configured by the server
administrator.

Terminology

CPX introduces several new terms:

* domain:
  the combined Apache VirtualHost entry, Sendmail local-host-names
  entry, and associated end users
* email address:
  a virtusertable entry which points to an external email address, a
  system user, or an alias. Aliases are managed together with the
  virtusertable entry as needed (e.g., for lists of two or more
  recipients, etc.)
* (there are more I can't think of right now)

Roles

CPX introduces three user roles which are central to the CPX design:

- the server administrator
- the domain administrator
- the end user

The server administrator is the primary account (the account that was
created when the VPS v2 was provisioned). This user is a member of the
'wheel' group and can use the 'su' command to become root and perform
systems administration functions, including adding new domains or
virtual hosts, creating new users, installing software, and
configuring system-wide server settings.

The domain administrator is a new concept introduced in CPX. The
domain administrator is an end user whom the server administrator has
authorized to be responsible for one or more domains.

An end user is an account created either by the server admin or a
domain admin. End users created by the server admin may become domain
admins, but end users created by domain admins may not (at least for
now).

Scott
-- 
Scott Wiersdorf
scottw@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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