Re: adding users after installing NIS

[Pete Templin <templin@bucknell.edu>]

On Tue, 28 Oct 1997, R Chris Ross wrote:

> 	I have just set up NIS on several of my machines and I am having a 
> little trouble adding a user.  If I use adduser the group, shadow and 
> passwd files in /etc are all updated properly but adduser doesn't 
> complete properly properly.  It terminates before asking for any 
> information on the user with a message that says that the user 
> doesn't exist and NIS knows nothing about the user.  The user is 
> being added to the machine that is the master server.
> 
> 	Is there a different way to add users after NIS is installed?  

I recently encountered similar difficulties.  I understand that it's a bug
in either adduser or useradd.

The fix which was proposed to me and seems to be working well (although
"expensive") is this:

tcsh> diff /usr/local/sbin/adduser /usr/sbin/adduser
618d617
<     system("cd /var/yp; make");


Here's the context in my fixed adduser:

sub systemcall {
    my $c = join(' ', @_);
    print "$c\n" if $debugging;
    system(@_) && &cleanup("$0: `$c' returned error code $?. Aborting.\n");
    system("cd /var/yp; make");
}


It's updating the maps each step of the way.  Apparently the errant
program is adding the new user beneath the "plus" entry in the password
file, which is then not read by the NIS-modified libraries or whatever.
This hack causes the NIS tools to see the new entry properly.


Pete

--
Peter J. Templin, Jr.                   Client Services Analyst
Computer & Communication Services       tel: (717) 524-1590
Bucknell University			templin@bucknell.edu



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