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From: hurf@batcomputer.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: How do you manage multiple /etc/passwd files?
Message-ID: <216@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: Thu, 19-Feb-87 13:47:17 EST
Article-I.D.: batcompu.216
Posted: Thu Feb 19 13:47:17 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Feb-87 04:09:31 EST
References: <2253@felix.UUCP> <286@desoto.UUCP>
Reply-To: hurf@batcomputer.UUCP (Hurf Sheldon)
Distribution: world
Organization: Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 23

In article <286@desoto.UUCP> shz@desoto.UUCP (S. Zirin) writes:
>In <2253@felix.UUCP> zemon writes:
>
>> I just installed my third computer which means that now I have three
>> /etc/passwd files.  So now I'm trying to figure out some way to relieve
>> my users from the need to update passwords three times when they want 
>> to change them.  How do you do it.
>
>Users should NOT use the same password on more than one computer for obvious 
>security reasons.  In addition, you should probably use password aging to 
>require your users to change their passwords periodically.

The above does NOT answer the question - with hosts.equiv & .rhosts
a password isn't necessary to move between systems anyhow. There are 
'rpasswd' programs around (try george@vax1.ccs.cornell.edu) for individual
users to update their passwords but the thing that seems to be the most useful
would be to keep the password files consistent & rdist from a master node
on a periodic basis. I would like to hear from those adventurous enough
to have tried this type of thing - I already have some responses to a similar
question & I will summarize all responses soon.


hurf