rsync - Nov 2002 - rsync for /etc/passwrd /etc/samba/passwd

Can somebody give me a quick education on sync'ing users, passwords and 
groups between 2 linux servers. Im using Redhat 7.1 as PDC and BDC using 
Samba. I want to sync mainly /etc/passwd, /etc/smbpasswd, /etc/group to 
get a consistancy going in the domain...
please guide me sync'ing passwords between them ..BOTH WAYS.....if a 
user changes a password on one computer it gets changed on the other...
and what is the probability of an error??

Please advice!!

Thanks,

Gurnish

Gurnish Anand <gurnish@murphybank.com> wrote:
> Can somebody give me a quick education on sync'ing users, passwords
> and groups between 2 linux servers. Im using Redhat 7.1 as PDC and
> BDC using Samba. I want to sync mainly /etc/passwd, /etc/smbpasswd,
> /etc/group to get a consistancy going in the domain...
> please guide me sync'ing passwords between them ..BOTH WAYS.....if a
> user changes a password on one computer it gets changed on the
> other... and what is the probability of an error??
Rsync syncs on a file level, and unidirectional only.

So no good for this application on both those counts.

Max.

On Tue, 12 Nov 2002, Gurnish Anand wrote:
> Can somebody give me a quick education on sync'ing users, passwords and
> groups between 2 linux servers. Im using Redhat 7.1 as PDC and BDC using 
> Samba. I want to sync mainly /etc/passwd, /etc/smbpasswd, /etc/group to 
> get a consistancy going in the domain...
first suggestion: keep your password on one server and use yellow pages 
or an ldap server or any network system supported by pam (ypserv and
ypbind are the simplest ones). You may need also to share homes using NFS. 

second suggestion: I implemented what you were asking on a small
cluster for I don't remember what reason (probably ypbind wasn't
working on those aold alphas) using scp, bat rsync has the same  effect:
replace the passwd command with a one which:

1) logs into the server using ssh 
2) launch the original passwd command
3) synchronizes the password files

(you may not need to log into the server, you may execute passwd using rsh
or other solutions).  
It does not work when using other tools for changing password. 

-- 
Franco Bagnoli (franchino) <bagnoli@dma.unifi.it>
Dipartimento di Matematica Applicata "G. Sansone" - Universita' di
Firenze
Via S. Marta, 3 I-50139 Firenze, Italy. Tel. +39 0554796422, fax: +39 055471787
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