bug in yppasswd

[Elizabeth D. Zwicky]

About yppasswd: We have reason to believe that yppasswd goes through the
database using getpwent in a loop instead of getpwuid once. This would
result not only in the symptom we saw (speed deteriorates in a geometrical
progression as the password file gets larger), but also in the one
mentioned where password changes match on substrings. You might be able to
avoid it by sorting your password file into reverse alphabetic order. On
Hewlett-Packards this problem happens not only in yppasswd but also in
finger. 

You may also have problems with rpc.yppasswdd, which in SunOS 3.5 dies if
anyone tries to change a password while the password file is locked.  This
is a significant problem for us at the beginning of quarters, when users
(using yppasswd) and operators (using an account program which locks the
password file) are both changing things often.

	Elizabeth Zwicky (zwicky at cis.ohio-state.edu)