Re: NIS and groups

[Peter Ross <petdr@cs.mu.OZ.AU>]

On 03-Dec-1999, Adam C Powell IV <hazelsct@mit.edu> wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> To get Netscape movemail working on my NIS server, I did:
> 
> adduser hazelsct mail
> 
> so NS could write a lock file to /var/spool/mail.  However, when I try
> to do this on the NIS clients, I get
> 
> # adduser hazelsct mail
> Adding user hazelsct to group mail...
> usermod: hazelsct not found in /etc/passwd
> adduser: `usermod -G mail hazelsct' returned error code 6.  Aborting.
> Cleaning up.
> 
> Of course hazelsct isn't in /etc/passwd, because hazelsct isn't a local
> user!
> 
> Same goes for group floppy, to write to the floppy disk, and numerous
> others.
> 
> How do I set things up so that either it will recognize group
> memberships on the NIS server, or else allow me to add NIS users to
> local groups?  Do I need to eliminate local groups like floppy, mail,
> etc?
> 
You are in luck, I just set NIS up yesterday, and encountered a similar
problem.

In /var/yp/Makefile, you need to set MINGID to be some lower value to
get the groups with smaller group ids, being shared across the systems.

Or alternatively, you could edit by hand the /etc/group file and add an
entry there.

Pete