Moving user/group databases

[jhall at vandaliamo.net]

>> At 03:52 PM 9/7/2007, jhall at vandaliamo.net wrote:
>>>All of my FreeBSD servers boot from CD, and we are going to be having
>>>several temporary employees coming and going over the next 6-12 months.
>>>Is it possible to move the user/group databases from their location in
>>>/etc (which is read only on my CDs) to another location?
>>>
>>>I have read the man page concerning pw and still do not understand what
>>> I
>>>should be doing.  Any suggestions, or direction to a how-to would be
>>>greatly appreciated.
>>>
>>>Thanks,
>>>
>>>
>>>Jay
>>
>> The simplest way would be to put a symbolic link from /etc to a writable
>> location.  You will need to re-make your boot CD to have this change.
>>
>>          -Derek
>>
>> --
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>
> I have recreated the CD with the sym links, and I still run into a problem
> because adduser tries to create temporary files in /etc.  If I remember
> correctly, the files it tries to create are /etc/passwd.XXXXXX.
>
> I was able to get pw to work to add the user accounts, but now I am trying
> to set the password for new account, and have hit the temp file snag.
>
> Is this something which can be reconfigured in pw.conf?
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> Jay
>
>
>

OK.  After some more digging, this is what I have found that I think will
work.

pw -V /xxxx/yyyy/etc other information for user.

vipw -d /xxxx/yyyy/etc and make the necessary password changes, etc.

The only hangup I have now is how to generate the encrypted password.  Any
suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  The passwords in my passwd file
start with $1$ which, if I remember correctly, is DES encryption.

Thanks,


Jay