By default, rpc.yppasswdd assumes that the template file used to generates the master.passwd and passwd maps for the default domain is called /var/yp/master.passwd. This default can be overridden by specifying an alternate file name with the -t flag.
Note: if the template file specified with this flag is /etc/master.passwd, rpc.yppasswdd will also automatically invoke pwd_mkdb(8) to rebuild the local password databases in addition to the NIS maps.
-d domain
The rpc.yppasswdd utility can support multiple domains, however it must choose one domain as a default. It will try to use the system default domain name as set by the domainname(1) command for this default. However, if the system domain name is not set, a default domain must be specified on the command line. If the system default domain is set, then this option can be used to override it.
-p path
This option can be used to override the default path to the location of the NIS map databases. The compiled-in default path is /var/yp.
-s
Disallow changing of shell information.
-f
Disallow changing of full name (’GECOS’) information.
-a
Allow additions to be made to the NIS passwd databases. The super-user on the NIS master server is permitted to use the ypchpass(1) command to perform unrestricted modifications to any field in a user’s master.passwd map entry. When rpc.yppasswdd is started with this flag, it will also allow the super-user to add new records to the NIS passwd maps, just as is possible when using chpass(1) to modify the local password database.
-m
Turn on multi-domain mode. Even though ypserv(8) can handle several simultaneous domains, most implementations of rpc.yppasswdd can only operate on a single NIS domain, which is generally the same as the system default domain of the NIS master server. The .Fx rpc.yppasswdd attempts to overcome this problem in spite of the inherent limitations of the yppasswd protocol, which does not allow for a domain argument in client requests. In multi-domain mode, rpc.yppasswdd will search through all the passwd maps of all the domains it can find under /var/yp until it finds an entry that matches the user information specified in a given update request. (Matches are determined by checking the username, UID and GID fields.) The matched entry and corresponding domain are then used for the update.
Note that in order for multi-domain mode to work, there have to be separate template files for each domain. For example, if a server supports three domains, foo, bar, and baz, there should be three separate master.passwd template files called /var/yp/foo/master.passwd, /var/yp/bar/master.passwd, and /var/yp/baz/master.passwd. If foo happens to be the system default domain, then its template file can be either /var/yp/foo/master.passwd or /var/yp/master.passwd. The server will check for the latter file first and then use the former if it cannot find it.
Multi-domain mode is off by default since it can fail if there are duplicate or near-duplicate user entries in different domains. The server will abort an update request if it finds more than one user entry that matches its search criteria. Even so, paranoid administrators may wish to leave multi-domain mode disabled.
-i
If rpc.yppasswdd is invoked with this flag, it will perform map updates in place. This means that instead of just modifying the password template file and starting a map update, the server will modify the map databases directly. This is useful when the password maps are large: if, for example, the password database has tens of thousands of entries, it can take several minutes for a map update to complete. Updating the maps in place reduces this time to a few seconds.
-v
Turn on verbose logging mode. The server normally only logs messages using the syslog(3) facility when it encounters an error condition, or when processing updates for the super-user on the NIS master server. Running the server with the -v flag will cause it to log informational messages for all updates.
-u
Many commercial yppasswd(1) clients do not use a reserved port when sending requests to rpc.yppasswdd. This is either because the yppasswd(1) program is not installed set-uid root, or because the RPC implementation does not place any emphasis on binding to reserved ports when establishing client connections for the super-user. By default, rpc.yppasswdd expects to receive requests from clients using reserved ports; requests received from non-privileged ports are rejected. Unfortunately, this behavior prevents any client systems that to not use privileged ports from successfully submitting password updates. Specifying the -u flag to rpc.yppasswdd disables the privileged port check so that it will work with yppasswd(1) clients that do not use privileged ports. This reduces security to a certain small degree, but it might be necessary in cases where it is not possible to change the client behavior.
-h
Display the list of flags and options understood by rpc.yppasswdd.
