topic Re: strange password problem in Operating System - HP-UX

strange password problem

Victor Lee — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 16:26:45 GMT

Hi

I have an HP L2000 running HP-UX 11.0. When users login their passwords are authenticated through NIS. There is one user in particular who can't log in to this machine using his current password stored in NIS (he gets login incorrect). However, he can login using his old password from 2 months ago. I checked the /etc/passwd file and there is no local entry for his account. nsswitch.conf passwd entry says "files nis". He can log into all other HP-UX machines using his current NIS password. Only this machine is acting weirdly. Any ideas what is causing this and how to fix it?

thanks
Victor

Re: strange password problem

Rick Garland — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 16:33:52 GMT

Is this a NIS client system?
When you do ypwhich is it bound to a valid ypserver?

How does the /var/yp/Makefile look? Modified recently?

Re: strange password problem

A. Clay Stephenson — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 16:40:30 GMT

It's possible that there is a stale entry in the pwgrd daemon. Do a ps -ef | grep pwgrd on this host and note the PID of the daemon. KIll it. (It's quite safe to kill it and the machine will run just fine without it as UNIX boxes did for decades before there was a pwgrd.) If this fixes your problem then you canchoose to restart the daemon; if not, then you will need to force a yppush of the passwd map.

Re: strange password problem

Rick Garland — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 16:40:31 GMT

Here is a short script that can tell you which ypserver the ypclient is bound to. Any clues?

#!/bin/sh

HOSTS="sysA sysB sysC"

(for SYSTEM in $HOSTS
do
remsh $SYSTEM -n ypwhich
done) | grep -v 'not bound' | sort | uniq -c

Re: strange password problem

Sandman! — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 17:50:57 GMT

I would hesitate to say this, since the problem manifests itself only for one user. However make sure you are up to date with your patches for the login program specifically PHCO_19292, which is a cumulative login patch, by running the following at the command line:

# swlist -l patch PHCO_19292

regards!

Re: strange password problem

Victor Lee — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 20:12:41 GMT

thanks to all for your replies.

I found out the problem: I have a master NIS server and a slave. The problem machine is bound to the slave, and the slave is not getting updated.

So now I have a new problem: Any ideas why the slave is not getting updated whenever I make changes on the master?

Re: strange password problem

MarkSyder — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 02:17:09 GMT

There should be a cron job(s) on the slave to pull information over from the master. Is it there?

Mark Syder (like the drink but spelt different)

Re: strange password problem

Venkatesan_5 — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 05:02:12 GMT

Just do all activities given below , which may help u.....

1. check the /etc/rc.config.d/namesvrs - file has all details properly mentioned....like NIS_DOMAIN...etc...
2. check the domainname
3. you can download NIS maps by initiating a command --- ypinit -s .
once map files are thru then this problem will not occur further...
4.check /var/yp/securenets--- has proper network address given
5.check whether NIS_SLAVE_SERVER is set to 1 in /etc/rc.config.d/namesvrs file and also execute the script also
# /sbin/init.d/nis.server stop
# /sbin/init.d/nis.server start

regds
Venkatesan