NIS password change, 10.20 -? 11.00 problems

[HP-UX SYSTEM MANAGER]

Here's a weird problem that just came up on our systems.

We recently migrated out NIS server to an 11.00 machine from a 10.20 system. Everything works fine, or so we thought.

We have a system that we re-define the home directory on for some application. The password files for user "user1" looks something like this:

NIS_Server # ypcat passwd | grep user1
user1:gfdfg,2/OH:27888:20:Real Name:/net/computer1/home/user1:/usr/bin/csh

Other_System # cat /etc/passwd | grep user1
+user1::27888:20:Real Name:/home/user1:/bin/csh

When the NIS password expires and they change it on the other system, it over-writes the home directory on the NIS server. In fact, it overwrites the entire NIS entry!

It did not do this on our 10.2 server, and we can't figure out how to fix it. Any ideas?

[S.K. Chan · Accepted solution]

The system (client) that is initiates the yppasswd change, is it on 10.20 still or 11.0 ? I for the fact that this can happen on 10.20 but not 11.0 onwards. This can happen if you have the "+" syntax implemented. When the password changed is issued on the client it'll take the local entry and replaced the NIS entry. That is why the NIS password enty got changed. This has happened to me, in my case my "gecos" field on the NIS master password file always got changed whenever the user try to change his/her password. The workaround to this (for my case) is that on the NIS server side (/etc/rc.config.namesvrs) I appended an option "-nogecos" to the line "YPPASSWD_OPTIONS" and restart my NIS server and that will prevent overwrting of the gecos field in the master password file. The line looks like this ..
...
YPPASSWD_OPTIONS="-nogecos /etc/passwd -m passwd PWFILE=/etc/passwd"
....
So depending on what field in your password file that got changed, you can put additional options like ..
-noshell
-nohome
-nopw
Just remember to restart your NIS server "nis.server stop/start" after the change.

[Helen French]

Hi there:

Just an addition to S.K's answer - If the other_system is running on 10.20 and if you are going to use the options (nogecos), then make sure that you have the NFS/NIS general patch installed on the system - PHNE_25234 and it's dependencies. I think these options were used by Sun before and you need to apply patches for HP to accept these values.

Also, check the patch level in the 11.0 system too.

HTH,
Shiju