This is a collection of programs for managing Linux users and groups in a multitude of databases. Using a plugin architecture, different storage methods can be interfaced with; currently there is support for Shadow, LDAP and MySQL.

The suite comes with useradd(8)-like command-line programs for single operations, programs for synchronization against another data source such as plain text files, web interface scripts, login restriction plugins, and print accounting.

Vitalnix provides a library, libvxdb, which encapsulates away the underlying storage mechanism and provides generalized methods of basic operations such as “add a user”, modify, delete. With regard to user/group information retrieval, it is mostly equivalent to NSS, but is thread-safe and multi-use safe.

Vitalnix is not the solution to everything. It does not allow you to add arbitrary attributes to a user account, even if the underlying storage mechanisms could be adopted to do so.

Of course, there is a bit more than just libvxdb. SAMBA Logon Time Restriction and Print Accounting are two parts for example, which are not directly related to user management, but they were nonetheless needed.

Resources