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Topic : Where would I specify which user is required to run an administration command? I work with a software product that has over 10 major components. The administration of most of these is done - selfpublishingguru.com

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I work with a software product that has over 10 major components. The administration of most of these is done with the root user with one notable exception where they use a less privileged user for such purposes. In most places, the instructions specify the user, and may even include instructions such as:

su - lessPrivilegedUser
clustercommand --resursive --restart

However, yesternight I bumped into a set of commands that stop and start a service where the instructions did not include this information. Neither did the section one level up. So I requested the documentation team to make amends. To my great surprise, they responded with the result list of a search saying that the documentation already has this in 28 different places, asking me to confirm whether I am certain I want it included for the 29th time.

Q: Should the user be specified for each administration task in an administration guide?


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Yes, always tell the reader which user to use

In material like this, there is no way to predict where the reader will start and if they have read any of the preceding material. If they ask themselves "how do I accomplish X" and you have a section named "Doing X", they're going to skip that other stuff. I've seen this described as the every page is page one model. It is very real behavior.

Another good reason to always and explicitly tell the reader what user to use is that (if the user is important) there are probably security implications if the reader uses the wrong user account.

If you are writing task-style topics with a prerequisites section, that is a good place to tell the reader which user to use. However, if your content has a lot of code/command snippets, you can also use a code comment. Using your example:

# As lessPrivilegedUser
clustercommand --resursive --restart

As a reader, I know I personally would appreciate that attention to detail. It also helps make your documentation safer. If the user is just going through your doc and copy/pasting and running commands blindly, they'll at least see that important note.


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If you have a few exceptional use cases, they should be indicated as such when they occur.

If all other cases relate to a single problem space (user privileges in this example), this should be indicated in an introduction and perhaps reiterated in another major section in case the user skips the intro.


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