[ale] Ceremonial Thumping Of Chest

[Charles Shapiro]

W00H00!

Just finished moving 19 gb of $HOME directories to a new machine here at
work. Plus making the new box the new NIS server. Plus making it the new
cvs server. And nfs mounting the new $HOME back to the old server. We
started around  12:40 yesterday while everyone was still workin' with a
flying tar, then finished the copy with rsync(1) overnight. I spent
about 3 hours reconfiguring everything else -- changing global
.profiles, fiddling cvs, tearing down and re-setting  up nis, moving all
the /etc/passwd entries to the new machine, et cetera and so forth.

I only shot myself in the foot once. Don't ever put just "nis" into the
passwd line in /etc/nsswitch.conf, as:

** BAD BAD BAD **
passwd:	nis
** BAD BAD BAD **

Instead,  make sure to put in both "files" and "nis":

** GOOD **
passwd:	files nis 	  
** GOOD **

The first example will lose all privileged users on the box, since nis
won't serve users numbered below 500 without special hacking -- which
you won't be able to do any more without root.  Fortunately, the console
was still logged in as root so I was able to patch the large bloody hole
in my foot, but I felt pretty @#$^%* ed sitting at my desk. Ain't 
nothing like:

su
root: no such user

to make you sit right up in your chair.



-- CHS

What is small, yellow, and extremely dangerous?
A canary with the root password.

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