Keeping /etc/passwds in sync

[Dan Ros]

On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 4:22 PM, Longman <clug at gasops.co.uk> wrote:
> What's the best way of keeping an /etc/passwd (and /etc/shadow, group
> etc) in sync between systems which need to have the same accounts?  The
> systems will *not* be on the same network.  One will be a private host
> and one will be a public host (though may need to keep more than two
> hosts in sync).

NIS/LDAP/PAM-MySQL etc are great but might be a bit cumbersome to set up.

If you only have a few machines and users, perhaps something as simple
as cheduling a nightly scp (with ssh keys) of the relevant files would
do the job? You'd want to set one up as the master and the rest as
slaves.

You'll just have to be careful to only modify users/passwords on the
'master' box.

hth, etc.

Dan