Insure the machines are all the same (uids, system accounts, etc...). 
Then just do a direct copy with scp in a cron job of the 2 needed files
/etc/passwd and /etc/shadow.  If you need the groups done as well then
/etc/group and /etc/gshadow.  This is how we manage accounts on our
servers due to the nature of our business we cant use nis. (can't have
diffrent clients share servers for this type of stuff).  We actually
have a dev system that maintains a passwd.all and several scripts to
parse through it and send the needed accounts to the needed servers.

hope this helps some.
Bill W


On Tue, 2003-04-15 at 13:45, Kyle Faber wrote:
> On Tuesday 15 April 2003 10:10 am, Bob George wrote:
> > On Tuesday 15 April 2003 09:45 am, Kyle Faber wrote:
> > > 	I am trying to determine the best way to effectively copy the
> > > /etc/passwd file from one machine to another.  I have read that you
> can
> > > not do this by merely copying the associated files, but is there
> some
> > > method I can use to accomplish this idea?
> >
> > Are you MOVING the accounts, or you just want the same users to have
> access
> > to similarly named accounts on both machines? Reason I ask is that
> I've got
> > four PCs for my users (family), and I'm (testing) using NIS/NFS to
> allow
> > them to log into any of four separate PCs and have the same desktop
> > settings.
> >
> > - Bob
> 
> 	The system in question is an authetication system.(radius)  I am
> trying to 
> create a backup machine for this system, but the users are based on PAM.
> I 
> want to be able to take a snapshot of the users on system A at the end
> of the 
> day and copy it over to system B in case A craps out.  NFS wouldn't work
> in 
> this case if, for instance, the hard drive is the piece that craps out.
-- 
Bill Warner <wwarner@direct-alliance.com>
Direct Alliance