Re: /etc/passwd doesnt contain all users

[Michael Neuffer <neuffer@neuffer.info>]

Quoting Bob Proulx (bob@proulx.com):
> Michael Neuffer <neuffer@neuffer.info> [2002-12-30 23:12:19 +0100]:
> > And when you do so, please make sure that you don't simply grab
> > any uid.....
> 
> Basically adduser starts that first available uid and proceeds forward
> after that.  A number is a number and from the pool of available
> numbers any one of those is as good as any other.
> 
> > It is a major hustle to resynchronize uids between machines that 
> > use NIS.
> 
> Excuse me?  You mean that don't use NIS, right?

Nope, that is wrong. I'm used to use NIS in large corporate networks
as well as in my small home network.

>  NIS is how people
> synchronize uids between machines.  Not that I like it, would rather
> use LDAP, but YP/NIS does have good points and will keep the uids the
> same on hundreds of hosts.  I can personally vouch for that.

Nope, just imagine the situation where you different pieces of software 
installed on different machines and you 
1. don't have everything installed on your NIS server
2. don't always install/update your machines in the same order

This will cause a mess where you get mixed up uids.

> > It is really fun when you share filesystems and your 
> > machines think that the files belong to different (system) users.
> 
> Yes, that would be a problem.  If you share files over NFS then those
> uids would need to be synchronized.  But that would seem to apply to
> non-system files and not to system files. 

Nope just look at the scenario above. That already is enough 
to cause problems.

> I would not recommend
> keeping system files on other hosts.  But there are many unique needs
> and I am sure I do not know your system operation requirements.
> Unique needs call for unique configurations.
> 
> > It is very funny, when this happens to your sendmail for 
> > example...
> 
> Yet another, "Excuse me?"  When would any sendmail files ever be
> shared?  That does not fit any workable model in my head.  Being local
> to the machine the local uid will override the NIS uid and everything
> works fine.  Or if adduser detects the NIS uid it won't add a local
> one and therefore you will get the NIS one.

Again see above.

Cheers
   Mike