RE: passwd.d

On Thu, 02 Nov 2006 13:20:20 +0100, Mark Rosenstand wrote:
>As you probably know, many distributions have all sorts of weird
>useradd/groupadd magic in their package install scripts. They tend to
>get pretty ugly when something needs to change, and I imagine that they
>aren't fun to maintain. Another problem is that various package managers
>consider configuration changes on a per-file basis.
>
>I was wondering if a {cron,inetd,profile}.d-style passwd.d directory
>could help solve this, together with a small utility to synchronize the
>entries with /etc/passwd for compatability purposes. I also realise that
>this is a lot of work, especially with my knowledge of the shadow
>codebase. So, before I open my editor, I'd like to hear people's
>thoughts on this :)

Mark, could you outline a bit more what you have in mind. What exactly
would you put in the password.d directory?

Would it contain an alternative database, e.g. one file per user?
That is the impression I have from the way you mention "synchronize
... for compatibility."  If I am correct, pretty much everything will be
using the "compatibility" route unless you climb into the glibc-nss
stuff or maybe write a pam module, so that utility would have to be
more like a continuously running daemon to keep things in sync....

Or would password.d contain account modification request packets
dropped in there by the package install scripts and then deleted
(or somehow flagged as completed) by the utility you mention?

Brandon.

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