Why should I make a copy of the original ASCII configuration files on the master server, before using them as source files for NIS map generation?
• A: Especially the security sensitive files (those with data of your users, such as /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow), but may be all your source files will have to be modified before being used as sources. Everything that is in the source files, will be visible in the NIS maps afterwords. So, if you include the root entry in the /etc/passwd that you use as source file, your passwd NIS map will contain this entry, too. Most of the time, you will copy /etc/passwd (and /etc/shadow for that matter), but keeping their filenames, so that you have the following files: • /etc/passwd • /etc/shadow • /etc/nissources/passwd • /etc/nissources/shadow From /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow, you will remove all ordinary users that you created, since they will come from NIS in the future. From /etc/nissources/passwd and /etc/nissources/shadow, you will remove all the others, the system accounts that came to your machine in the process of system installation. The /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow, that you started with
