*BSD News Article 38418


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From: hildekca@eng.umd.edu (Kevin Hildebrand)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: getpwent routines on NetBSD-1.0
Followup-To: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Date: 22 Nov 1994 21:24:17 GMT
Organization: Project GLUE, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Lines: 19
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <HILDEKCA.94Nov22162418@shorty.eng.umd.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: shorty.eng.umd.edu

It it possible to have the *pwent routines use a flat password file
rather than the dbm databases?  On other operating systems you have
the power to choose between the two methods.  

The reason I'm asking is as follows.  We currently support 9 different
architectures/OSes all using Kerberos login code and all having a
common password file.  So far, on all of the platforms we support it
has been possible to use the same flat password file.  Under NetBSD, I
haven't found a way to do this, since the *pwent routines insist on
looking only at the databases.  We have written our own *pwent
routines that use hesiod and don't need any password files at all, but
we don't want to have to recompile any of the existing system
binaries.

Thanks!

Kevin Hildebrand
University of Maryland, College Park
Project Glue Systems Developer