Now I know why they said that.
They were talking about RADIUS clients authenticating via PAM pwdb, and in the SuSE pwdb docs I just read, pam_pwdb is nothing more than a wrapper to the /etc/passwd file! Arrggh!
That's what I'm trying to avoid. If /etc/passwd is not a database, then each lookup must be a simple linear search.
Hu? Have you guys ever heard of nscd? It should start scaling at a limit of more than 4000 users, and running 30000-60000 users isn't really a problem. But you might want to think of delivering mails into the home and placing the home directories into a terminfo-like directory hierarchy. nscd doesn't cache crypted passwords from shadow.
Maybe pam_mysql is a possibility, but I've not had time to get mysql running yet.
Egan
Roman.
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| Roman Drahtmüller