[suse-security] password change on NIS as root?

[Bjorn Tore Sund <bjornts@xxxxxxxxx>]

Having just upgraded my NIS (no plus) Master from SuSE 8.0 to 9.0 I all
of a sudden have a problem.  Normal users can change their NIS passwd
running 'passwd', the root user cannot - I'm prompted for the user's 
password not the root password.  Even when running the command on the
NIS master.  Yppasswd used to help, but these days only informs me that
it's deprecated and seems to simply run passwd.

Local password file and NIS password file are different on the server,
by design.  Root is not a NIS user, again, because I like it that way.

I _can_ change the password by running htpasswd and using vi(1) on the 
NIS shadow file (I just did, the problem became apparent because of a 
user who had forgotten his password), but I was looking for something 
slightly less ugly.  There must surely still be tools?

Bjørn
-- 
Bjørn Tore Sund         Phone:  (+47) 555-84894      Stupidity is like a
System administrator    Fax:    (+47) 555-89672      fractal; universal and
Math. Department        Mobile: (+47) 918 68075      infinitely repetitive.
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teknisk@xxxxxxxxx       Email:  bjornts@xxxxxxxxx    http://www.mi.uib.no/

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