This is where our biggest performance hit comes into play. When we switched
from
NetBSD to Linux our machine came to a screeching halt because I way new to the
ways of PAM, and the pitfalls of pwdb. On our old 200Mhz Pentium, POP
connections
alone were taking more than a second to authenticate (which doesn't seem like
much,
but when you have 60-80 connections per minute, it adds up) and the uptime load
was
in the 100+ range. I finally learned to switch to pam_unix_auth, and things
settled down.
Now, with a 400Mhz PII, we could use pwdb again, but I can't find any info on
why, specifically, it's any better.
Ideally, it might be nice to see a PAM architecture that loads the passwd file
into a binary database, and maybe even keeps it in memory. It could reload
from
the passwd file either by having a modified vipw, or by checking the passwd
file
whenever it doesn't find a username.
The slow authentication thing is the only thing I've encountered that even
remotely
suggests Linux is not capable for large-scale enterprises, and we've been
hitting this machine
pretty hard for about a year now.
Randy Carpenter wrote:
> ;) The password file was around 52,000 before we cleaned out old
> accounts... Granted it takes a long freakin time to login if you are at
> the bottom of the file (Something that is not a problem under Solaris)
>
> -Randy
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