From owner-freebsd-isp Mon Feb 23 11:41:01 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id LAA24752 for freebsd-isp-outgoing; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 11:41:01 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from news1.gtn.com (news1.gtn.com [192.109.159.3]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id LAA24647 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 11:40:50 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from andreas@klemm.gtn.com) Received: (from uucp@localhost) by news1.gtn.com (8.8.6/8.8.6) with UUCP id UAA00581 for isp@FreeBSD.ORG; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 20:30:08 +0100 (MET) Received: (from andreas@localhost) by klemm.gtn.com (8.8.8/8.8.7) id UAA05936; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 20:17:47 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from andreas) Message-ID: <19980223201747.23348@klemm.gtn.com> Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 20:17:47 +0100 From: Andreas Klemm To: isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: What if "vipw" and "pw useradd" work concurrently ? 3000 POP users, how ? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.89.1i X-Disclaimer: A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular X-Operating-System: FreeBSD 3.0-CURRENT SMP Sender: owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org I'm currently thinking about how to deal with about 3000 pop3 or imap users. I'm currently adding 5000 local users onto my machine. Just for curiosity ;-) Well, never had to deal with such a huge number of users ;-) NTW: After about 500 users the pw useradd script is really getting slower and slower ;-) Well, then I thought, ok, what might happen, if the system is creating users automatically and then some root user decides to manually finetune passwd using vipw. Well, I get some "holes" in the passwd files (some pop users were missing) and the pw useradd script tells me: root{165} ~ time ./mkuser pw: user 'pop1962' disappeared during update pw: user 'pop1967' disappeared during update ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This seems to be a race condition. I think /etc/master.passwd is locked and the pw useradd utility can't work ... Perhaps this race condition is easily manageable by saying, if something like "pw useradd" is running "don't do that" ;-) But a collegue and I are currently thinking about making admin frontends for adding pop users to a POP server which get user data from a database and you don't know, when there is such a utility running. So ... never more administration via "vipw" if such scripts are running ??? What are your experiences ? BTW, what solution would you recommend if you have to deal with about 3000-4000 pop users ??? How many pop user would you put onto a single machine ??? FreeBSD, Linux and Solaris 2.x machines (Ultra SPARC) are available. Another thing, "authentication" ! BSDI has the possibility to authenticate users using the Radius protocol... What would be the best solution in a larger user environment, to deal with some thousand users ? (Mainly pop accounts and some www/ftp accounts) ? How would you handle incoming mailboxes ? One /var/mail/LOGINNAME is certainly not sufficient ... Would you use a central NIS Server for user authentication over several machines ? I think no other way .... or ?! What about Quotas ? Is quota mechanism fast enough, to distinguish sme thousand users fast enough ??? Or would you create some machines pop1, pop2, pop3..popn for every new 1000 pop users ? Need some good ideas ;-) Is there a good source of information (book, FAQ, ...) for such large installations ? Thanks Andreas /// -- Andreas Klemm powered by ,,symmetric multiprocessor FreeBSD'' To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message