Administering NIS users

Changing user passwords in the NIS password database

Users must run passwd or yppasswd to change their passwords in the NIS password database. Before they can do this, you must start the yppasswdd daemon on the master server.

NOTE: The password database on the master server that builds the password maps should not be that server's /etc/passwd file. This is because this database should not contain an entry for root, and because you may want to limit access to the master server to a small group of people, a goal that would be defeated by having /etc/passwd (and /etc/shadow) contain entries for all the users.

Furthermore, note that users with entries in the local I&A security database will not be authenticated for the local system through NIS, regardless of whether or not they have entries in the NIS password database. For a user to be locally authenticated using the NIS password database, the user must be removed from the local I&A security database. The I&A security databases are created from the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files with the creatiadb command. Entries in /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow that begin with a ``+'' or ``-'' escape are not added to the I&A databases by the creatiadb command.