nis auth problems

[Mark Nipper]

On 23 Feb 2004, FreeBSD at TinyCreatures wrote:
> I recently set up a NIS server on a box running FreeBSD 5.2. Everything
> went well. The clients are Linux machines, tried to configure one, it
> connects to the NIS server, all yp commands return successfull queries,
> made the necessary changes in nsswithch.conf as well, however, when i'm
> trying to log on with a user that exists only on the NIS server i get
> "Login incorrect" messages all the time.
> What could be the problem.

	I assume you are running with shadow password files on
your Linux clients?  Did you make sure to set your /var/yp/passwd
entries to look like:
---
user:x:1000:1000:User:/home/user:/bin/sh

instead of:
---
user:*:1000:1000:User:/home/user:/bin/sh

	I think by default FreeBSD (it's been a really long time
since I set this up myself initiialy, but I recall this being a
problem) uses '*' as the place holder in passwd, but this
confuses my Linux clients.  Replacing with 'x' fixes the problem.

-- 
Mark Nipper                                                e-contacts:
Computing and Information Services                      nipsy at tamu.edu
Texas A&M University                        http://ops.tamu.edu/nipsy/
College Station, TX 77843-3142     AIM/Yahoo: texasnipsy ICQ: 66971617
(979)575-3193                                      MSN: nipsy at tamu.edu

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