Re: Password Change Machine
On Mon, 16 Oct 2000, Jeremy Gaddis wrote:
> > > Set root's shell to whichever you prefer, and set
> > > the regular user's shell to /usr/bin/passwd.
> >
> > Yeah...I thought of this at first, but I need a solution that doesn't
> > mess with the passwd file at all, as the passwd file is distributed to
> > other machines on a regular basis, and the users actually need access to
> > their shell there. :)
>
> I assume you'll have a cronjob of some sort running
> on the "client" machines which snags the password
> file off the "server" machine? No big deal, after
> it copies the password file, run a script on it to
> change their shells back to whatever you want.
> Nothing sed, awk, or perl couldn't handle.
You seem to be thinking his master password file is stored on a machine
other than the password-server machine. Try rereading his original
request for help. You'll see that corrupting the master password file
isn't such an intelligent thing to do.
My suggestion follows:
One possibility is to take advantage of NIS. On the server machine you
have a second password file (passwd.nis or something) that is a
"normal" password file. In the file /etc/passwd you have the lines
root:0:0::/:/bin/bash
+:0:0:::/bin/yppasswd
and set the machine to get passwords from this NIS map (do a man on
nsswitch.conf). In this way, you can have your cronjob scp the
passwd.nis file around, but transparently substitute in this alternate
shell when the users come in.
I know I'm leaving out a LOT of details, but hopefully you can figure
those out from this basic idea. Good luck.
Damian Menscher
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