Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ncar!boulder!gore!jacob
From: jacob@gore.com (Jacob Gore)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Re: Simple System Question
Message-ID: <130138@gore.com>
Date: 23 Dec 90 05:33:43 GMT
References: <10978@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Reply-To: jacob@gore.com (Jacob Gore)
Organization: Gore Enterprises
Lines: 29

/ comp.sys.next / eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) / Dec 19, 1990 /
> In article <15005@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> cpenrose@sdcc13.ucsd.edu
>	(Christopher Penrose) writes:
> [...]
> >>3) Why don't new users have their names listed in /etc/passwd?
>
> >You have discovered the liabilities of NetInfo, or Network Information
> >database.  New users are added directly to a database and are not
> >automatically updated in /etc.  [...]
>
> [...] it is not a liability.
> Just because you haven't seen something before doesn't make it
> "wrong."*
>
> (1) There is more information in the NetInfo database
> than can be expressed in the "traditional UNIX file formats"
> (2) That notwithstanding, you are trying to do something
> analogous to displaying a 3-dimensional object on a flat piece
> of paper.  It's just not possible--all you can manage are
> projections.

Of course Netinfo has more functionality than corresponding /etc/* files.
But there need not be incompatibility: the /etc/* files could be
implemented as special files, interfaces to netinfo.  The "projection" is
all people ask for in these cases.

Jacob
--
Jacob Gore		Jacob@Gore.Com			boulder!gore!jacob