Steve Langasek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Such a system would be neither simple, nor reliable; it would still be > possible for changes to be made on two machines to one account in the > same rsync window, resulting in one set of changes being lost. It is > much simpler to designate a "master" server (a PDC) that all update > requests are sent to, then use rsync to propogate the master file out to > other servers.
I have to agree with this statement. I have implemented just such a system, for 4 Samba servers at geographically distributed branch offices of a company. One server is designated as a 'MASTER' server, and the others are 'SLAVE' servers. Any time a user account has to be modified added or deleted, it is done on the one server, and within 15 minutes, the changes have propogated to all of the others. Richard - If user's have the need to change their own passwords, consider the use of a tool such as Webmin, which has a UserMin module (I think its called that). UserMin can be used to let them change their password, etc. You can easily extend the concept beyond just the smbpasswd file. I rsync files such as chap-secrets and pap-secrets for PPP dialup access, and VPN access via pptpd. The Linux system passwords are kept in sync using NIS/YP - although I have considered trying to switch the systems to use LDAP or SMB authentication instead.... -- /----------------------------------------------- | Jim Morris | Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | AIM: JFM2001 \-----------------------------------------------
