Arch Linux

shakin

Member

Registered: 2008-08-07

Posts: 24

Replicating user accounts across systems

Tomorrow at work I will be asked to consult about a problem where, for whatever reason, there is an application programmatically adding users on two load balanced systems. There is a cron job (I think) setup to replicate the users so that both systems have the same set of users. The actual number of users will be in the thousands once this application goes live. The application code likely cannot be changed due to the fact that it's (obviously) a massive mess.

The actual problem is that we need to add a new user to the system, but for reasons I won't understand until tomorrow this is not possible due either to the way the application manages system users or how the users are replicated between servers.

Is there any preferred way to keep the users on different systems in sync?

fukawi2

Ex-Administratorino

From: .vic.au

Registered: 2007-09-28

Posts: 6,237

Website

Re: Replicating user accounts across systems

Generally done with an Authentication server where all the master data is kept, then the clients all connect over LDAP, NIS, NIS+ or similar. IIRC, NIS and NIS+ caches which is beneficial for High Availability configurations, but LDAP doesn't cache AFAIK.

LDAP seems to be the de facto standard these days, unfortunately (IMHO).

---

Are you familiar with our Forum Rules, and How To Ask Questions The Smart Way?

BlueHackers // fscanary // resticctl