Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 14:24:28 +1030 From: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> To: pstewart@oncomdis.on.ca Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Linux --> FreeBSD Message-ID: <199801240354.OAA01035@word.smith.net.au> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 23 Jan 1998 20:30:01 -0000." <199801240119.UAA19683@oncomdis.on.ca>
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> I just joined the list.. hello to all...:) G'day Paul. Nice to have you aboard. > We are in the process as an ISP network provider of switching most if > not all machines from Linux to FreeBSD. As the network admin, I am > now faced with learning FreeBSD. Shouldn't hurt you too much. You should be aware that there a few other lists that may interest you (freebsd-questions and freebsd-isp). The mailing list archives on www.freebsd.org are also a good place to search for answers (and people to ask questions of). > One thing I am not totally clear on is the way the passwd.master file > is updated. I can run adduser etc. and put a user online but does > that automatically update the passwd.master. Yes. The standard system tools for manipulating the user database are vipw (straightforward editing of the database in text form), adduser (interactive user adding) and pw (batch-mode interface). If you are writing automated user management stuff, 'pw' is an excellent tool. It is probably worth mentioning that the FreeBSD password database works slightly differently from what you are expecting. /etc/passwd and /etc/master.passwd are kept as conveniences for the administrator and legacy programs. The actual information is kept in /etc/pwd.db (no password data, general access) and /etc/spwd.db (password data, secure access). These are db files, which make lookups substantially faster. If you want to do bulk password data updates, edit a copy of /etc/master.passwd and then use pwd_mkdb to regenerate the databases. (The standard system tools do this for you.) > Is there a series of howto & info files available on this stuff such > as there is with Linux? FreeBSD has manpages that are conscientiously updated. It's also much more like a "normal" unix system, so many "normal" admin books are good reference sources. There's a recommended reading list on the FreeBSD website which lists a number of texts. In addition, Walnut Creek CDROM publish Greg Leahy's 'The Complete FreeBSD', which covers a lot of ground when it comes to general usage. > If anyone has a web page devoted to Linux users converting to FreeBSD > I'd love to see it. It would be nice to think that FreeBSD was so obvious that such reeducation wasn't required. 8) In all seriousness though, I don't believe that anyone has published such an entity. Of course, if you were to take notes over the next few months you would be in a position to start something like that yourself... -- \\ Sometimes you're ahead, \\ Mike Smith \\ sometimes you're behind. \\ mike@smith.net.au \\ The race is long, and in the \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ end it's only with yourself. \\
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