Shadow Passwords

Question

Shadow Passwords

Hi,

I want to transfer ( backup ) all clients from one xserver to a backup xserver, both are running 10.4.6. All passwords are stored as shadow passwords.

I thought that all passwords are stored in /private/var/db/netinfo/local.nidb/ but I got around 100 clients and only 24 files in that directory. What are these files in that directory for? The all start with Store.xxx ( xxx stands for 3 digit numbers at the end).

I know I could use CCC and copy the whole drive but I don't want that because I use the backup server for 2 live servers as backup and need to backup 2 sets of clients.

Any help highly appreciated.

Christian

Xserve Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on Apr 29, 2006 9:42 PM

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Answer 1

May 1, 2006 10:17 AM in response to christian krauter

/private/var/db/netinfo contains the local directory node's (NetInfo) database. Passwords (by default) are stored as one-way hashes in /var/db/shadow/hash/ .

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Answer 2

May 1, 2006 10:18 AM in response to christian krauter

You can archive your Open Directory information using Server Admin. In the Archive pane of the Open Directory section there are options to archive or restore the database. I've only used this to restore a corrupted database on the same server that created it, but if you don't care about the existing OD database on your backup server I don't see why it wouldn't work. You can protect the backup with a password as well and probably should.

Mac OS X (10.4)

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Answer 3

XDaemon

Level 1

10 points

May 2, 2006 5:40 AM in response to Bruce Gaya

The user guid is the name of the file containing their hash in /var/db/shadow/hash. For example, at terminal run:

nireport . /users name generateduid

That will give you a list of the usernames and guid's. Now you can run

open /var/db/shadow/hash

and you can match the guid to the files.

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Answer 4

May 3, 2006 3:48 PM in response to XDaemon

Hi XDaemon,

Great stuff and many thanks it worked!

Christian

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