[PLUG] RE: Steve Duin's column of 5/21/02

[Eric Shore Baur]

On Thu, 30 May 2002, Rick Hamell wrote:

>
> > Although MacOS uses the FreeBSD userland it's still quite a different
> > beast under the hood than *BSD.  I haven't poked at it too much but I
> > don't think it uses anything like a simple /etc/passwd file for user
> > information.
>
> 	The file exists, even root couldn't edit it though. All I can
> think is that the system users are get there in a non-changeable file,
> while all the actual users are kept in a seperate file/database.

	/etc/passwd does exist and (like any other file) can be modified
by root (or at least, it should be possible - unless something is wrong
with the setup/install...).  The catch is that root is not enabled by
default and cannot log in at all (this can be changed).  However, the file
is not consulted unless the machine is booted into single user mode.  For
most things, the netinfo database is used.  There are a lot of command
line things you can do with netinfo, and a graphical editor for it - but
its a huge database of configuration (users, groups, hosts, mount points,
services, etc.) that is not well documented just yet.

> 	From a user land stand point you have all the basic utils you
> need, CD, MV, etc, etc. But the locate database wouldn't update for
> me. I've also seen other's run Xfree instead of Aqua.

	Hm... don't know about the locate database.  Works for me, but at
this point, I can't remember if I had any trouble with it at first.  As
for Xfree, I have it running sometimes along Aqua - kind of nice that way.
There are some good utilities (ie: ethereal) that will only run that way
right now.

	This whole thing may be a little off topic, but I wanted to post
to it, since I started out a Mac user and started moving to linux since it
seemed more powerfull/customizable and easier to work with to learn some
programming.  Now, my Mac has the best of both worlds, I think.  I have
perl, PHP, apache and a GUI that I like more than KDE or Gnome (each to
his own, right?).
	Of course, I still have a linux box sitting in the corner that
does a fair amount of work as well.  :)

Eric