Re: NIS and /etc/passwd

[Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg%britannica.bec.de@localhost>]

On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 09:24:43PM +0000, David Holland wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 08:22:29PM +0100, Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
>  > > > If yes, what would be needed to move the functionality completely into 
> a
>  > > > separate file, so that +/-/@ (anything else?) can be dropped from the
>  > > > normal passwd routines?
>  > > 
>  > > I don't think that's a good idea. What about it is annoying you?
>  > 
>  > It creates a huge amount of complexity in getpwent.h and the database
>  > maintainance routines that shouldn't exist.
> 
> Unless you want to remove the features (e.g. being able to select some
> but not all accounts from an external source) the complexity is a
> given.

NSS can express at least the part of "look into passwd and continue if
no match was found". It would be easy to have a NIS config file to
express "look for / accept the following users/groups/patterns". As
such, I don't see the need for keeping it in /etc/passwd. In fact,
having such a filter functionality would likely be useful for a number
of data sources. It could certainly make the code much clearer by
prodiving composition of independent modules.

Joerg