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by dizhn 999 days ago
This sounds like a completely unrelated thing and you are not constrained by the plain text password/shadow file for scale. NIS existed for many decades. You can even use Active Directory (or samba) for authentication and user management.

But the article is not about this at all.
1 comments
crabbone 999 days ago
This shows you either didn't read what you replied to or don't understand the subject.

This file is the public interface of the Linux system to everyone who wants to get information about users on the system. It doesn't matter that alternative tools exist: they were already mentioned in the post you replied to. It's not the point...

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dizhn 999 days ago
If I didn't understand I'd be grateful if you could explain it.

As far as I know that file does not get referenced for the users in an external directory server. That's how the systems scale without needing to put the users in the file. Aren't we talking about a high number of users (and their authorization levels) when talking about scalibility in this case?

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Phrodo_00 998 days ago
> This file is the public interface of the Linux system to everyone who wants to get information about users on the system

No it isn't. PAM is. The password file is only one of the places where users might be defined.

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