Moving user/group databases
All of my FreeBSD servers boot from CD, and we are going to be having several temporary employees coming and going over the next 6-12 months. Is it possible to move the user/group databases from their location in /etc (which is read only on my CDs) to another location? I have read the man page concerning pw and still do not understand what I should be doing. Any suggestions, or direction to a how-to would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Jay ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moving user/group databases
At 03:52 PM 9/7/2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All of my FreeBSD servers boot from CD, and we are going to be having several temporary employees coming and going over the next 6-12 months. Is it possible to move the user/group databases from their location in /etc (which is read only on my CDs) to another location? I have read the man page concerning pw and still do not understand what I should be doing. Any suggestions, or direction to a how-to would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Jay The simplest way would be to put a symbolic link from /etc to a writable location. You will need to re-make your boot CD to have this change. -Derek -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moving user/group databases
At 03:52 PM 9/7/2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All of my FreeBSD servers boot from CD, and we are going to be having several temporary employees coming and going over the next 6-12 months. Is it possible to move the user/group databases from their location in /etc (which is read only on my CDs) to another location? I have read the man page concerning pw and still do not understand what I should be doing. Any suggestions, or direction to a how-to would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Jay The simplest way would be to put a symbolic link from /etc to a writable location. You will need to re-make your boot CD to have this change. -Derek -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support. I have recreated the CD with the sym links, and I still run into a problem because adduser tries to create temporary files in /etc. If I remember correctly, the files it tries to create are /etc/passwd.XX. I was able to get pw to work to add the user accounts, but now I am trying to set the password for new account, and have hit the temp file snag. Is this something which can be reconfigured in pw.conf? Thanks, Jay ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moving user/group databases
On Friday 07 September 2007 23:51:43 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 03:52 PM 9/7/2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All of my FreeBSD servers boot from CD, and we are going to be having several temporary employees coming and going over the next 6-12 months. Is it possible to move the user/group databases from their location in /etc (which is read only on my CDs) to another location? I have read the man page concerning pw and still do not understand what I should be doing. Any suggestions, or direction to a how-to would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Jay The simplest way would be to put a symbolic link from /etc to a writable location. You will need to re-make your boot CD to have this change. -Derek -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support. I have recreated the CD with the sym links, and I still run into a problem because adduser tries to create temporary files in /etc. If I remember correctly, the files it tries to create are /etc/passwd.XX. I was able to get pw to work to add the user accounts, but now I am trying to set the password for new account, and have hit the temp file snag. Is this something which can be reconfigured in pw.conf? pw -V /writeable/etc/ -- Mel ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moving user/group databases
At 03:52 PM 9/7/2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All of my FreeBSD servers boot from CD, and we are going to be having several temporary employees coming and going over the next 6-12 months. Is it possible to move the user/group databases from their location in /etc (which is read only on my CDs) to another location? I have read the man page concerning pw and still do not understand what I should be doing. Any suggestions, or direction to a how-to would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Jay The simplest way would be to put a symbolic link from /etc to a writable location. You will need to re-make your boot CD to have this change. -Derek -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support. I have recreated the CD with the sym links, and I still run into a problem because adduser tries to create temporary files in /etc. If I remember correctly, the files it tries to create are /etc/passwd.XX. I was able to get pw to work to add the user accounts, but now I am trying to set the password for new account, and have hit the temp file snag. Is this something which can be reconfigured in pw.conf? Thanks, Jay OK. After some more digging, this is what I have found that I think will work. pw -V ///etc other information for user. vipw -d ///etc and make the necessary password changes, etc. The only hangup I have now is how to generate the encrypted password. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. The passwords in my passwd file start with $1$ which, if I remember correctly, is DES encryption. Thanks, Jay ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moving user/group databases
On Sep 7, 2007, at 2:51 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 03:52 PM 9/7/2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All of my FreeBSD servers boot from CD, and we are going to be having several temporary employees coming and going over the next 6-12 months. Is it possible to move the user/group databases from their location in /etc (which is read only on my CDs) to another location? I have read the man page concerning pw and still do not understand what I should be doing. Any suggestions, or direction to a how-to would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Jay The simplest way would be to put a symbolic link from /etc to a writable location. You will need to re-make your boot CD to have this change. -Derek -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support. I have recreated the CD with the sym links, and I still run into a problem because adduser tries to create temporary files in /etc. If I remember correctly, the files it tries to create are /etc/passwd.XX. I was able to get pw to work to add the user accounts, but now I am trying to set the password for new account, and have hit the temp file snag. Is this something which can be reconfigured in pw.conf? Thanks, Jay It sounds like you made a link for /etc/master_passwd. I'm pretty sure what DR meant was a symlink for the entire /etc directory: /etc - /somewhere_writable/etc/ You need this because adduser also has to rewrite /etc/passwd and / etc/group when you add/delete users. This means copying your entire / etc hierarchy somewhere writable; naturally I don't know if this is acceptable in your organization. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moving user/group databases
On Sep 7, 2007, at 2:51 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 03:52 PM 9/7/2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All of my FreeBSD servers boot from CD, and we are going to be having several temporary employees coming and going over the next 6-12 months. Is it possible to move the user/group databases from their location in /etc (which is read only on my CDs) to another location? I have read the man page concerning pw and still do not understand what I should be doing. Any suggestions, or direction to a how-to would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Jay The simplest way would be to put a symbolic link from /etc to a writable location. You will need to re-make your boot CD to have this change. -Derek -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support. I have recreated the CD with the sym links, and I still run into a problem because adduser tries to create temporary files in /etc. If I remember correctly, the files it tries to create are /etc/passwd.XX. I was able to get pw to work to add the user accounts, but now I am trying to set the password for new account, and have hit the temp file snag. Is this something which can be reconfigured in pw.conf? Thanks, Jay It sounds like you made a link for /etc/master_passwd. I'm pretty sure what DR meant was a symlink for the entire /etc directory: /etc - /somewhere_writable/etc/ You need this because adduser also has to rewrite /etc/passwd and / etc/group when you add/delete users. This means copying your entire / etc hierarchy somewhere writable; naturally I don't know if this is acceptable in your organization. OK. I have been able to get this to work the way I wanted to. This is what I have done. Create symbloic links in /etc to a rw directory for passwd, master.passwd, group, pw.db, spwd.db. This directory is not located on the CD. Use pw to add users, change passwords, etc. To add a user. pw -V /location/of/directory adduser -n username -h 0 Using the -h 0, you are prompted to enter the password for the user. To modify a user. pw -V /location/of/directory usermod -h 0 Changes the password for the user. Thanks to everyone for their help. Jay ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
