[CentOS] etc passwd and groups file

[John R Pierce]

Carlos Santana wrote:
> I intend to install lustre file system on the systems.  It does not
> support LDAP and need to have etc passwd/groups database. All file
> system clients need to have  same passwd and groups so that UID and
> GID are the same when they contact file system server. So I am not
> sure, how will I manage this. Any suggestions?
>   

NIS is the old fashion way, and its not considered particularly secure 
as it uses IP addresses as authentication, so keep the whole cluster 
behind a firewall.

with NIS, there is one master system with the yp/passwd and yp/shadow 
files (as well as groups, hosts, etc), and these are pushed to all the 
other systems on updates.    users on any system would change their 
password with `yppasswd` command, which pushes the changes to the NIS 
master.