Alternatives for Yellow Pages?

[flint at gistdev.UUCP]

We set up a system like you described to update password files for one of
our clients: as a solution it stinks, but I think it is about all you can
do.  Our client later messed up when they set up a cron job which scrogged
their /etc/passwd file on the main machine at midnight.  Our cron job
dutifully came along an hour later and copied the garbaged passwd file to
all the other hosts in the network.  My advice: if you gotta do that, at
least make sure that the root login entry cannot be corrupted no matter
what else happens.  (This isn't a hard problem to repair, IF you know what
happened, and what to do.  When you don't, finding that you are unable to
log into any of the machines in the network is likely to send your management
into a serious panic, especially if they are at all security conscious.)