Sincronize /etc/passwd and /etc/yp/passwd.master

[Neeraj Arora]

You can force your nis server machine to act as a nis client to itself; look in the handbook for the section that says something similar to 'nis servers which are nis clients too'.

You will have to maintain a different master.passwd, passwd and group file for yp. Then update the Makefile in /var/yp to accomodate the path for yp-related master.passwd, group and passwd files.

Use pw(8) with the -V option (to specify location to the yp-related files) to update, delete and modify user and groups. This will update only the files in the seperate directory (specified after the -V option) and not touch your local system database. On the local database keep only root, system and one user who is member of the group wheel. The rest will be sourced from/by yp (the server is a client to itself).

The above applies only to the nis server.

The clients are configured as normal. Thus, all accept root and the local user who is member of the group wheel, will need to use passwd to update their passwd, on all machines seperately; while users existing only on the nis database will need to use yppasswd to update their passwd; no matter which machine they are logged on from.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Neeraj

>>> Ângelo Rodrigues <amr at fccn.pt> 04/30/03 00:44 AM >>>

Hi again,

My problem is simple. I'm trying to install a central login/password system 
but I want to find a way to sincronize /etc/master.passwd and 
/var/yp/master.passwd without having to force all local users to run two 
commands, passwd and yppasswd.
It has been suggested me to make a simbolic link from  /var/yp/master.passwd 
to /etc/master.passwd. This is a possible solution but, this will force the 
server's root user to be the client's root user so, I won't be able to access 
to any client when the network is down.
I think any client should have at least one local user to avoid this critical 
situation.
Do you have any ideia about this?

Regards,


On Tuesday 29 April 2003 11:37, Neeraj Arora wrote:
> Hmm...needed to search the trash for your original post before replying is
> it...???
>
> And I did it....I think amidst the replies I got the impression that you
> werent able to direct the home directory to the correct one when the
> machine was not the nis server machine.
>
> Well cleared up now...
>
> Sorry about that...:^)
>
> So is your problem solved??? Or would you like to state it again in a clean
> way (your problem (undeleted) minus all the replies that have been made by
> now...:^)
>
> Regards,
> Neeraj
>
> >>> Ângelo Rodrigues <amr at fccn.pt> 04/29/03 20:59 PM >>>
>
> Hi,
>
> I think you have made a series confusion!!! I don't want to use any file
> server, I just want to use a centralized system of login/password.
> Please, read all messages to understand all point.
>
> Regards,
>
> On Tuesday 29 April 2003 10:31, Neeraj Arora wrote:
> > Please refer to the email below (that I am replying to) before reading
> > what I write...
> >
> > /var/yp/master.passwd is not to be a softlink or symbolic link to
> > /etc/master.passwd According the documentation (handbook I think),
> > /var/yp/master.passwd is a copy of /etc/master.passwd without the root,
> > system and one user who is also the member of group wheel.
> >
> > One can use amd (automount daemon) to have all users have their home
> > directories in /home, while the directories inside /home are themselves
> > mounted when needed according to the amd map supplied by nis. On the
> > fileserver or the nfs server system, one could have different directories
> > for different machines depending on any one or a combination of the
> > os/hostname/ipaddress/network/etc. of the mounting machine.
> >
> > So if the fileserver had /allhomedirs and in that had ./linux, and
> > ./freebsd and in each of them ./tom ./dick and ./harry; a linux client
> > would end up providing /allhomedirs/linux/<user> at /home/<user> while a
> > freebsd client would do the same by providing /allhomedirs/freebsd/<user>
> > at /home/<user>.
> >
> > This will allow the entries in the /var/yp/master.passwd and
> > /var/yp/passwd to remain untouched when produced as nis maps for
> > different clients/hosts. Same can be done by mounting the appropriate
> > shell binary from a fileserver using amd maps while the path for the
> > shell can still remain only /path/shell or /usr/local/bin/bash; for linux
> > clients the
> > /usr/local/whatever is mounted from /allusrlocaldirs/linux/whatever and
> > for freebsd it is mounted from /allusrlocaldirs/freebsd/whatever.
> >
> > One might not need to overwrite any field produced by nis on a client
> > machine.
> >
> > Personally I feel, the less the configuration differences in different
> > client machines, the better.
> >
> > Hope I havent got off the point completely...:-\
> >
> > Regards,
> > Neeraj
> >
> > >>> Ângelo Rodrigues <amr at fccn.pt> 04/29/03 20:08 PM >>>
> >
> > On Monday 28 April 2003 17:39, Dan Nelson wrote:
> > > In the last episode (Apr 28), ^Angelo Rodrigues said:
> > > > On Monday 28 April 2003 16:22, Matthew Seaman wrote:
> > > > > On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 05:06:36PM +0000, ^Angelo Rodrigues wrote:
> > > > > > On Monday 28 April 2003 15:48, Dan Nelson wrote:
> > > > > > > You want the same password; why wouldn't you want the same
> > > > > > > homedir and shell also?  All our NIS users have their homedir
> > > > > > > set to /net/homedirmachine/home/username.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > But my server users are distributed betwen /home and /homeapp and
> > > > > > this method will force the same thing in the clients.
> > > > >
> > > > > You can selectively override part of a NIS password database entry
> > > > > by using NIS magic tokens in the local passwd file --- see
> > > > > passwd(5). For instance, user 'fred' might have home directory
> > > > > /home/fred in the NIS database, but you can override that in a
> > > > > client machine to /users/fred by putting:
> > > > >
> > > > >     +fred::::::::/users/fred:
> > > > >
> > > > > into /etc/master.passwd on the client.  All of the other fields are
> > > > > inherited from the NIS database.
> > > >
> > > > This could be a solution :)
> > >
> > > Standardizing the name of the homedir would make your job a lot easier.
> > > Can you make symlinks in /home so that every user whose homedir is in
> > > /homeapp can use /home/user also?  Then the user's home is
> > > "/home/user" no matter what machine he logs into.
> >
> > But there's still a little problem... As the /var/yp/master.passwd is a
> > softlink to /etc/master.passwd, the server's root user will be the same
> > in the client so, the client won't have any local user. This can cause
> > some series problems when the network is down. The client machine
> > should have at least some local users to avoid this kind of problem.
> >
> > Regards,

-- 

Ângelo Rodrigues - amr at fccn.pt 
FCCN - Fundação para a Computação Científica Nacional
Av. Brasil, 101  1700-066 Lisboa - Portugal
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