syncing passwords on an MC/SG cluster

[Klaas D. Eenkhoorn]

Is it safe to use the command usermod.sam -p PASSWORD USERNAME (set uid on root) to sync passwords between 2 cluster nodes ?

I have no NIS(+).

Kl@@S

[Steven E. Protter]

I would not do that.

I would keep them up to date manually or use secure shell public keys to allow ssh between boxes without passwords once the id's are set up.

SEP

[Elmar P. Kolkman]

Steven's solution only works for pseudo users, not the end-unix-users.

The problem of syncing the users/passwords in a MC/SG cluster is the same as on two normal unix servers.

I would suggest having the systems in trusted mode and use rsync on the /tcb directory. Mind that homedirectories etc are not synced, only the user info is synced.

Advantage of using this is that you have a file per user, so it doesn't matter if the user info is changed on server A or server B, it is copied from the server where it has been changed last to the server with the old version of the files.

[Hoefnix]

Klaas,

The problem with syncing the passwords is that it's not realtime.
A user updates his password on on server and starts another applications that's running on the other then his new password is not replicated to it.(can be confusing for the user)

For this reason it's better to implement NIS(+).
Be aware of security issues with NIS(+)

HTH,
Peter Geluk

[Klaas D. Eenkhoorn]

Discussion contineued in http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=616097