9.4. The Program rpc.yppasswdd

Whenever users change their passwords, the NIS password database and probably other NIS databases, which depend on the NIS password database, should be updated. The program "rpc.yppasswdd" is a server that handles password changes and makes sure that the NIS information will be updated accordingly. rpc.yppasswdd is now integrated in ypserv. You don't need the older, separate yppasswd-0.9.tar.gz or yppasswd-0.10.tar.gz, and you shouldn't use them any longer.

You need to start rpc.yppasswdd only on the NIS master server. By default, users are not allowed to change their full name or the login shell. You can allow this with the -e chfn or -e chsh option.

If your passwd and shadow files are not in another directory then /etc, you need to add the -D option. For example, if you have put all source files in /etc/yp and wish to allow the user to change his shell, you need to start rpc.yppasswdd with the following parameters:

   rpc.yppasswdd -D /etc/yp -e chsh

or

   rpc.yppasswdd -s /etc/yp/shadow -p /etc/yp/passwd -e chsh

There is nothing more to do. You just need to make sure, that rpc.yppasswdd uses the same files as /var/yp/Makefile. Errors will be logged using syslog.