Our Users have Root!

This paper describes how things work at our site, where users have responsibility for administering their own workstations.

Hewlett-Packard Laboratories is HP's primary advanced R&D laboratory, with about 1000 people and about 1500 computer systems. A central support organizaiton within HP Labs is charged with creating an infrastructure to enable this to work successfully, even though they do not have root access on most systems in the division.

The paper gives some examples of how things are done differently than at other sites, and details what is in place. It also gives some areas where there is work yet to be done.