Replicating users

[stoutseun]

Hi all

I'd like to get to a scenario where our Dev and Prod servers' users are replicated so that the Dev server at any given moment can take over the full responsiblity as a Prod server. Therefore we need to have the users replicated at least once per week or so.
Does anyone know of a product that can do this or have done a similar thing since I'm not too familiar with scripting to do this myself.

Thank you

 

[DSMARWAY]

hi,
do you just want the users replicated ? or do you want the whole lot replicated on the Dev node ?

if the latter option , it may be worth investing in MC-SERVICE GUARD as a highly available cluster , if prod crashes , the DEV will start up necessary apps and mount file systems etc..

 

[gerudman]

Hi,
we only need the users to be replicated so that at all times all users are existing on both machines with the same passwords.

Thx

 

[Frog]

You can use rcp in a script and put it into cron to copy the password file over once a week.
ex. rcp "hostname:/etc/passwd" "hostname:/etc"
Hope this helps.

 

[jollyroger]

Copying the password file accross every week will work to a certain degree, but it will depend upon how your users are set up.

Perhaps you could investigate something like NIS, or NIS+. This will allow you to have one machine with all your users on, and your development machine will query the "Top" machine for user information and let the people login.

They can then either have the same home directories and profiles, or different ones depending upon how you set it up.

However NIS is not that secure, and NIS+ is complicated.

Another solution would be to set up a LDAP Server on one of your machines. This could inspire you to then continue down that road to Single Sign On - The Holy Grail of Administration.

Best of Luck

 

[hiwaycool]

I program this stuff out..
you can also run NIS... I see not mention of that above.