Why machines in passwd anyway? [was Re: NT machine accounts in FreeBSD?]

[Gerald Carter]

Peter Samuelson wrote:
> 
> The only thing I can think of is that Samba is using the 
> passwd file to reserve UID numbers so it can use them 
> for RIDs.  Is this the case?  In this case, I would think 
> it would be faster and not much harder for smbpasswd to 
> generate RIDs from somewhere else, like a smb.conf
> parameter:
> 
>   trust account rids = 50000-50999

This is a good idea I think.  Luke's original idea left open the
possibility of actually storing information in the home directory
of a machine trust account.  This will never happen I think.

With the above proposed scheme, the only naging detail
is to make sure that the above number space will not overlap
with any of the RID's generated for user uid's.  Which
is one reason why the machine accounts in /etc/passwd
is a clean solution.  It's all handled in one number space.
I'm not sure why putting acounts in /etc/passwd is a big problem
though.  Other than personal preference of course :-)



CHeers, jerry
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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