Re: a second /etc/passwd

On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, Anton Yurchenko wrote:

> I`m looking for a way to setup such a thing: to have one 
> /etc/passwd|/etc/shadow reside in the usuall location in /etc and the 
> other one
> to be in some other location that I specify. The second one would be the 
> one that is optional.
> This is needed for such a setup in which I have a hosting machine with a 
> root disk, and then I could plugin and mount a second disk with more 
> users and theyr data and that the passwd located on the secodn disk 
> would be picked up and used. The idea is to gave a generic root 
> partiotion with ability to pickup any new partition with 
> userdata/authorization info.

This is not a PAM issue. It is a NSS issue.

You may find that you already have support for other database services for 
the authentication data.

Many systems have support for DB files which can reside in another 
location.

There are other backend support solutions for this as well including a 
MySQL NSS backend.

NSS is configured from the /etc/nsswitch.conf file.

NSS is available on Linux and Solaris. It may also be available on other 
platforms.