--------
[Jan Harkes <jaharkes_at_cs.cmu.edu> writes:]

> What are you trying to do here? Log in with your admin credentials, or
> create a new user?

Asking the question made me figure out what you meant.  And the answer
is, the former.  But figuring out the answer helped me understand a bit
more of how Coda looks at the world.

> If you are trying to log in for the first time, the default password
> would be set to 'changeme', and you probably would want to log in using
> 'clog vandys_at_my.local.realm'

Got it.

> If you are trying to create a new user then you have to first add the
> user's identity in the pdb database (essentially Coda's version of
> /etc/passwd and /etc/group) and once that is done you can activate the
> account and set a password with au nu.
> 
> On the server run,
> 
>     pdbtool nu vandys
> 
> And then on the client,
> 
>     au nu
>     Your vice name: admin
>     Your password: admin_password
>     New user name: vandys
>     New user password: whatever

And getting clear on the dichotomy of which side the server wants to
see, and what the client side does--that helped quite a lot.  Thank you!

So now I've changed my admin password, and created a guest account.  So
the basics of server operation are becoming much clearer.

> When rpc2 is unable to validate the checksum of the incoming packet it
> complains loudly. When the wrong password is typed, it will also fail to
> validate because don't actually send the password across the network,
> but try to decrypt incoming packets based on a hash of the password.
> (and with an incorrect password the key is wrong).
> 
> So it isn't really an RPC2 error, it is just that that is the place
> where it is detected.

Well, my experiences over the years with RPC have certainly made me
appreciate how powerful, yet inscrutable it can be.  I'm glad you gave
me a pointer.

Thanks again!
Andy Valencia