garyb@abekrd.UUCP (Gary Bartlett) (08/25/89)
We are running an HP9000/300 system with a no. of diskless nodes and a network
of Sun 3/50s. The passwords on the HP are yellow paged (a Sun being the
yellow pages server). We have experienced two problems:
1) The finger command displays two entries per user. One showing the
shell used on the Suns, the other showing the shell used on the HPs
(different). This isn't too bad though (and for all I know may be
the correct behaviour), but the second problem is a little worrying:
2) After running the chfn command to update the finger information
(GCOS field), the local /etc/passwd file gets corrupted. It
contains all the yellow paged passwd information and the local
information all mixed into one. This is clearly wrong and
considering chfn runs suid root for anyone, possibly dangerous.
Has anybody noticed this before? Is it a real bug?
--
Gary C. Bartlett NET: garyb@abekrd.co.uk
Abekas Video Systems Ltd. UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!{reading,pyrltd}!abekrd!garyb
12 Portman Rd, Reading, PHONE: +44 734 585421
Berkshire. RG3 1EA. FAX: +44 734 597267
United Kingdom. TELEX: 847579burzio@mmlai.UUCP (Anthony Burzio) (08/28/89)
In article <470@abekrd.UUCP>, garyb@abekrd.UUCP (Gary Bartlett) writes: > We are running an HP9000/300 system with a no. of diskless nodes and a network > of Sun 3/50s. The passwords on the HP are yellow paged (a Sun being the > yellow pages server). We have experienced two problems: > Has anybody noticed this before? Is it a real bug? Actually, Yellow Pages just doesn't work very well on HP. I still have a call in to the Response Center from two months ago trying to fix sendmail requiring a complete hosts table on all client nodes (800 server and 300-based cluster client). Since nobody called back, I supposed it was just broken and haven't called in with the other plethora of problems with Yellow Pages. Sigh. HP does make very nice graphics terminals :-) ********************************************************************* Tony Burzio * Computers know when you are mad, Martin Marietta Labs * and get even! mmlai!burzio@uunet.uu.net * *********************************************************************
mhn@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Mark Notess) (09/01/89)
> 2) After running the chfn command to update the finger information > (GCOS field), the local /etc/passwd file gets corrupted. It > contains all the yellow paged passwd information and the local > information all mixed into one. This is clearly wrong and > considering chfn runs suid root for anyone, possibly dangerous. > Has anybody noticed this before? Is it a real bug? It is a bug through 6.5. It is now fixed (fixed in the sense that chfn will work on local /etc/passwd entries without corrupting the file). Mark Notess