[1239] in netbsd-help mailing list archive
Re: several problems with NetBSD 1.3/Athena
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Hudson)
Wed Apr 29 15:19:47 1998
To: peeto de la noche <gamache@MIT.EDU>
Cc: netbsd-dev@MIT.EDU, netbsd-help@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 29 Apr 1998 12:34:11 EDT."
<199804291634.MAA18158@planet-zorp.MIT.EDU>
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 15:19:27 EDT
From: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
> 2. there is no 'adduser' command for the superuser to add people to
> /etc/master.passwd file. or if there is, it's not in the PATH
> env variable.
There's an adduser command in the netbsd locker. But, if you want,
you can instead use the shiny new /etc/athena/access file. See
access(5) (type "man -M /usr/athena/man 5 access" as root or just "man
5 access" as a normal user) for a description of the file format. Be
aware that if you have an access file, then being in the passwd file
won't be enough to guarantee access to the system, so you have to list
all allowed users in the access file if you have one.
> 3. i've mentioned this previously, but there's no straightforward way to
> change the root password ('/os/usr/bin/passwd -l root' is the only way)
> and people don't know of this way very often.
Just "passwd -l root" should work, but yeah, it kind of sucks,
especially since you have to make sure the machine is non-public and
update the proper file (/etc/master.passwd.local on NetBSD,
/etc/passwd.local on Linux and SGI, /etc/shadow.local on Solaris).
I'm going to look into providing a standard interface for changing the
root password soon.
> and then it prints 'exec: short read' and goes on the next kernel
> ('netbsd.old' or something).
One cause of this kind of behavior is a bad floppy disk... but
sometimes I wonder if something else is wrong.
