NIS user problem

[Leonid Mishkind]

Hi All .
I have a user defined in a NIS.
When I am logged in to a server this is the output of the id command:
root@aux1> id omar
uid=333(omar) gid=20(users)
su to the user works fine as well...But, when I run commands like :
root@aux1> cd ~omar
sh: ~omar: not found.
root@aux1> chown -R omar:users omar
chown: unknown user id omar

Well, you can see the result for yourself ...
I did a restart for nis/pwgr and no improvement .
Please help.
Leonid.

[Steven Schweda]

What do you get from commands like these?

grep omar /etc/passwd

ypcat passwd | grep omar

grep passwd /etc/nsswitch.conf

[palaniappan.sp]

Hi,
R u having sudo access??If u r having try login with ur NIS id on one server and add sudo in front of every command.
Is ur home directory created in san or in server.And that is auto mounted?? when ur logging??
Then try that commands what steven had given ..

Regds
Palani

[Leonid Mishkind]

Thanks for the replies.
1 . No sudo
2. No Automount
3. The home dir is SAN device.
4. root@aux1> ypcat passwd | grep -i omar
omar:*:333:20:arda omar,55167,,:/users/omar:/bin/tcsh

[Steven Schweda]

Ok. That's one of the three things for which
I asked. Let's assume for the moment that I
really didn't care about the others. What
about these?

ls -ld /users/omar

ls -l /users/omar

Can I assume that "cd ~root" works, and that
you aren't using some obsolete shell which
doesn't understand "~user_name"?

[Leonid Mishkind]

I am working with user root which has /sbin/sh.
root@aux1> ls -ld /users/omar
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root sys 16 Dec 13 09:54 /users/omar -> /aux1/users/omar

root@aux1> ls -ld /aux1/users/omar
drwxr-xr-x 2 root sys 96 Dec 13 09:54 /aux1/users/omar
root@aux1>

root@aux1> ls -l /users/omar/
total 64
-r--r--r-- 1 root sys 832 Dec 13 09:54 .cshrc
-r--r--r-- 1 root sys 347 Dec 13 09:54 .exrc
-r--r--r-- 1 root sys 334 Dec 13 09:54 .login
-r--r--r-- 1 root sys 439 Dec 13 09:54 .profile

The files are with root permissions since I cant chown to the user :).
about the other things ( I really thought you will not care to much )...
root@aux1> grep -i omar /etc/passwd
root@aux1>

passwd: files [NOTFOUND=continue] nis
group: nis [NOTFOUND=continue] files

I just found out a very interesting thing... When I change my shell to tcsh the cd ~omar works fine but the chown command still failles on unknown user

[Leonid Mishkind]

and ... cd ~root works fine and all other local users work fine... I checked about 5 nis users ... none of them work....

[Dennis Handly]

>I am working with user root which has /sbin/sh.

That's a real shell.

>The files are with root permissions since I can't chown to the user.

Sure you can. Just use a hammer:
# chown -R 333:users /aux1/users/omar

>omar:*:333:20:arda omar,55167,,:/users/omar:/bin/tcsh

If you have a "*", how can you log in without using su(1)?

>When I change my shell to tcsh

Probably because that isn't a real shell. :-)

[Steven Schweda]

Ok. The ypcat result makes it appear that
NIS is working, but that it's being ignored.

Is this one of those cases where you need a
+
line at the end of /etc/passwd (and
/etc/group)?

man 4 passwd (And look for NIS.)

Otherwise, I'm running low on ideas.

[Robert-Jan Goossens_1]

Hi Leonid,

---
and ... cd ~root works fine and all other local users work fine... I checked about 5 nis users ... none of them work....
---

I've got a feeling your shell is missing a step, nis gets its information from your nis master server

omar:*:333:20:arda omar,55167,,:/users/omar:/bin/tcsh

On you local server you have
/users/omar but that is linked to a NAS filesystem.If you use $HOME (ksh) or ~home (csh) you shell expects the directory to be mounted, you shell does not do a change directory!

I think you can solve this by either using the automounter and link the user to a nfs mounted filesystem or adding the info of the local homedir to the passwd file.

example
+omar:::::/aux1/users/omar:
get all info from the NIS master/slave except the info of the homedir.

Hope this helps,
Robert-Jan