From owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Sat Aug 18 22:50:35 2018 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@mailman.ysv.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2610:1c1:1:606c::19:1]) by mailman.ysv.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 391521078268 for ; Sat, 18 Aug 2018 22:50:35 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from feenberg@nber.org) Received: from mail2.nber.org (mail2.nber.org [198.71.6.79]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B6EBD7AA0E for ; Sat, 18 Aug 2018 22:50:34 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from feenberg@nber.org) Received: from sas1.nber.org (sas1.nber.org [198.71.6.89]) by mail2.nber.org (8.15.2/8.15.2) with ESMTPS id w7IMoQuO088529 (version=TLSv1.2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 bits=256 verify=NOT); Sat, 18 Aug 2018 18:50:27 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from feenberg@nber.org) Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2018 18:50:26 -0400 (EDT) From: Daniel Feenberg To: Philipp Vlassakakis cc: FreeBSD Mailing List Subject: Re: NFS + ZFS - Base System readonly In-Reply-To: <0595E83D-5E70-44B1-ACB5-A84261FB4A6D@lists.vlassakakis.de> Message-ID: References: <82BCE4D6-69DF-49E0-8648-4E9F3767D089@lists.vlassakakis.de> <0595E83D-5E70-44B1-ACB5-A84261FB4A6D@lists.vlassakakis.de> User-Agent: Alpine 2.21 (LRH 202 2017-01-01) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-KLMS-Rule-ID: 1 X-KLMS-Message-Action: clean X-KLMS-AntiSpam-Status: not scanned, disabled by settings X-KLMS-AntiSpam-Interceptor-Info: not scanned X-KLMS-AntiPhishing: Clean, 2018/08/17 16:02:44 X-KLMS-AntiVirus: Kaspersky Security 8.0 for Linux Mail Server, version 8.0.1.721, bases: 2018/08/18 15:42:00 #8740877 X-KLMS-AntiVirus-Status: Clean, skipped X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.27 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2018 22:50:35 -0000 On Sat, 18 Aug 2018, Philipp Vlassakakis wrote: > Is there a way to have a separate passwd file for each client and not to use the one of the template? > I want to set up independent machines with different users. (NIS is not an option) In the FreeBSD diskless booting process, each client receives the default /etc overwritten by whatever files we want to differ across clients with client specific files. We overwrite fstab on nearly every client and passwd on a few. I understand why you might want to avoid NIS. NIS was unreliable and undiagnosable when we used it, so we stopped using it. LDAP wasn't any better. It is a great relief to have an actual password file to examine. I couldn't find any information about this process in the Handbook, but the man page - "man diskless" or on the Web at: https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=diskless&sektion=8&manpath=freebsd-release-ports does have this information, as does: http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/FreeBSD-diskless.html Daniel Feenberg NBER