[SunHELP] Settle a bet: Syncing passwd files

[Bret Adams]

Why do backups if you cant overwrite a bad passwd, group or shadow 
file?  If you do the file command on those files they are listed as ascii 
text.  They are not executables.  They only contain data. As long as the 
data between the files are all good and valid, I dont see a reason why you 
cannot overwrite those files.  But you might want to think about security 
and who would have access to what.

Bret Adams
M. Fabrikant & Sons

At 08:26 AM 9/11/02 -0500, Ben Ricker wrote:
>I have a number of machines that do the same thing; they are part of a
>redundant web application. I am running Solaris 7.
>
>I have a dispute with a fellow admin. He seems to think that syncing
>/etc/passwd, group, and shadow passwords from one machine to another is
>bad news and one should not do it. I counter with the fact that if that
>were the case, then how could you ever restore an /etc directory after a
>catastrophe without a complete backup.
>
>Anyway, does anyone have a definitive answer to this dispute? I have
>done this a number of times and have run into a couple of problems here
>and there, mostly due to munged accounts I have to recreate.
>
>Ben Ricker
>Wellinx, Inc.
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