HP-UX System Administrator's Guide: Overview HP-UX 11i v3 (B3921-90011, September 2010)

system call access, access is usually “all or nothing” based
on the user's effective UID.
HP-UX Role-Based Access Control (HP-UX RBAC) enables
you to group common or related tasks into a role. For
example, a common role might be User and Group
Administration. Once the role is created, you assign to
specific users a role or set of roles that enables them to run
the commands defined by those roles.
When you implement HP-UX RBAC, you enable non-root
users to perform tasks previously requiring superuser
privileges without granting those users complete superuser
privileges.
Auditing The HP-UX auditing system records security-related events
for later analysis. Administrators use auditing to detect
and analyze security breaches. Auditing is available on
both Standard Mode and Trusted Mode HP-UX systems.
User Database Previously, all Standard Mode HP-UX security attributes
and password policy restrictions were set on a system-wide
basis. The introduction of the user database enables you
to set security attributes on a per-user basis that overrides
system defaults.
Further Information
For more information on the enhanced security containment features introduced above, see the
following resources:
• HP-UX System Administrator’s Guide: Security Management
• HP-UX 11i Security Containment Administrator's Guide
• The privileges(5) manpage
Start-up and Shutdown
Whenever you turn on (or reset) your computer, the hardware, firmware, and software must be
initialized in a carefully orchestrated sequence of events known as the boot sequence. A similar
sequence, known as the shutdown sequence, refers to the orderly sequence of steps needed to
halt HP-UX. The shutdown sequence ensures all running processes are properly stopped and
any data in memory that needs to be written to disk is not lost when the operating system is
halted and power to the server is lost.
Run Levels
When HP-UX (or any operating system) is up and running, it is said to be booted. When HP-UX
is not running, it is said to be halted. HP-UX, like most Unix based operating systems, has several
levels of the “booted” state known as run levels. As HP-UX starts up or shuts down, it transitions
through the various run levels until it reaches its targeted run level. The various run levels
determine what aspects of HP-UX are running.
At boot time, a daemon known as init is started. Its primary role is to create processes from a
script stored in the file/etc/inittab (see inittab(4)). The/etc/inittab file is one of the
mechanisms used to configure what aspects of HP-UX are running at any given run level. The
inittab file can also specify the initial run level that the system will boot to.
The following list describes the general characteristics of each HP-UX run level:
run level 0 When run level 0 is initiated, HP-UX transitions from whatever run level it is
currently in through all lower run levels and halts. In the process of
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