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Date:      Thu, 2 May 2002 17:31:10 -0500
From:      "Matthew D. Fuller" <fullermd@over-yonder.net>
To:        Matt Simerson <freebsd@blockads.com>
Cc:        "Geoffrey C. Speicher" <geoff@sea-incorporated.com>, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: bug in pw, freebsd 4.5
Message-ID:  <20020502173110.B22449@over-yonder.net>
In-Reply-To: <B8F72368.93A%freebsd@blockads.com>; from freebsd@blockads.com on Thu, May 02, 2002 at 05:10:00PM -0400
References:  <Pine.BSF.4.10.10205021621350.12421-100000@sea-incorporated.com> <B8F72368.93A%freebsd@blockads.com>

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On Thu, May 02, 2002 at 05:10:00PM -0400 I heard the voice of
Matt Simerson, and lo! it spake thus:
> 
> On 5/2/02 4:27 PM, "Geoffrey C. Speicher" <geoff@sea-incorporated.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 9 Mar 2002 04:52:25 -0600, Matthew D. Fuller wrote:
> > 
> > [in regard to multiple concurrent pw(8) processes hosing master.passwd]
> > 
> >> The reason for this is that the only file pw(8) locks is
> >> /etc/master.passwd.new when it copies into it.
> > 
> > [snip]
> > 
> >> If anybody's interested, I could take a stab at hacking something
> >> together for this sometime over the next week or so.
> > 
> > I'm interested.  How did the stab go?  I'm browsing archives and I can't
> > find any more followups.
>
> I'm interested too. I've seen this problem (quite a few times) on a large
> system (1k-10k+) users.  It only happens on systems being provisioned to via
> pw. 

Well, the stab didn't go because nobody was interested   8-)

I looked at it a bit, but nobody expressed any interest, and my time
ended up getting suckedup by other things.

I actually had in mind some farther-reaching changes, which would (after
'fixing' pw) include potentially rewriting adduser(8) and friends to
backend into pw to; sort of consolidate the user-management stuff a bit.
I'll see if I can put some time over the next few days into delving into
it and at least getting the first step (of making the locking work more
usefully) work.

What do people think of using the external lock file (well, I can't
actually think of any OTHER way to do it, so...)?  I'm thinking /var/run,
but on the flipside just putting it in /etc might be cleaner.  Comments?


-- 
Matthew Fuller     (MF4839)     |    fullermd@over-yonder.net
Unix Systems Administrator      |    fullermd@futuresouth.com
Specializing in FreeBSD         |    http://www.over-yonder.net/

"The only reason I'm burning my candle at both ends, is because I
      haven't figured out how to light the middle yet"

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