[324] in NetBSD-Development
Re: Some notes on installation
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Hudson)
Wed Dec 28 05:33:13 1994
To: yoav@MIT.EDU
Cc: ghudson@MIT.EDU, netbsd-dev@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 28 Dec 1994 05:18:19 EST."
<9412281018.AA04772@marinara.MIT.EDU>
Date: Wed, 28 Dec 1994 05:33:11 -0500
From: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
> you can't just create stuff from /etc/passwd into /etc/master.passwd
> you also need to create two other db databases (secure and
> insecure). seeing as you want to avoid perl.. I don't know how to
> edit db files in sh or csh.
You run /usr/sbin/pwd_mkdb after editing /etc/master.passwd.
> /bin/login
> adds you to the four files (/etc/passwd, etc/master.passwd,
> and the secure and insecure databases)
> removes you from all four on logout.
How are you going to handle multiple logins? How do you know if the
user has a local account (and should not be removed from the passwd
files) or not? Note that a user could log in without having a local
account, and have a local account by the time he or she logs out.
> /etc/reactivate
> creates the four files based on /etc/passwd.local (as opposed to
> copy the file over).
Let me repeat this one more time: the NetBSD system assumes that
/etc/master.passwd is the source form for passwords. The most obvious
sign of this is that the passwd program edits /etc/master.passwd. If
you make /etc/master.passwd a derived file, then that breaks "passwd"
and any other part of the system which assumes that /etc/master.passwd
is the source file for passwords.
The reason I don't like the Athena scheme is that it significantly
modifies the way passwords are handled in the operating system. My
scheme does not; it simply augments the base operating system
functionality with a cleaning script.
