Moving user/group databases

[Fred Condo]

On Sep 7, 2007, at 2:51 PM, jhall at vandaliamo.net wrote:

>> At 03:52 PM 9/7/2007, jhall at vandaliamo.net wrote:
>>> All of my FreeBSD servers boot from CD, and we are going to be  
>>> having
>>> several temporary employees coming and going over the next 6-12  
>>> months.
>>> Is it possible to move the user/group databases from their  
>>> location in
>>> /etc (which is read only on my CDs) to another location?
>>>
>>> I have read the man page concerning pw and still do not  
>>> understand what I
>>> should be doing.  Any suggestions, or direction to a how-to would be
>>> greatly appreciated.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>>
>>> Jay
>>
>> The simplest way would be to put a symbolic link from /etc to a  
>> writable
>> location.  You will need to re-make your boot CD to have this change.
>>
>>          -Derek
>>
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>
> I have recreated the CD with the sym links, and I still run into a  
> problem
> because adduser tries to create temporary files in /etc.  If I  
> remember
> correctly, the files it tries to create are /etc/passwd.XXXXXX.
>
> I was able to get pw to work to add the user accounts, but now I am  
> trying
> to set the password for new account, and have hit the temp file snag.
>
> Is this something which can be reconfigured in pw.conf?
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> Jay

It sounds like you made a link for /etc/master_passwd. I'm pretty  
sure what DR meant was a symlink for the entire /etc directory:

/etc -> /somewhere_writable/etc/

You need this because adduser also has to rewrite /etc/passwd and / 
etc/group when you add/delete users. This means copying your entire / 
etc hierarchy somewhere writable; naturally I don't know if this is  
acceptable in your organization.