113 lines
5.7 KiB
HTML
113 lines
5.7 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
|
|
<!--Converted with LaTeX2HTML 96.1-c (Feb 29, 1996) by Nikos Drakos (nikos@cbl.leeds.ac.uk), CBLU, University of Leeds -->
|
|
<HTML>
|
|
<HEAD>
|
|
<TITLE>The Network Information System</TITLE>
|
|
</HEAD>
|
|
<BODY LANG="EN">
|
|
<A HREF="node1.html"><IMG WIDTH=65 HEIGHT=24 ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="contents" SRC="contents_motif.gif"></A> <BR>
|
|
<B> Next:</B> <A HREF="node131.html">Getting Acquainted with NIS</A>
|
|
<B>Up:</B> <A HREF="nag.html">The Network Administrators' Guide</A>
|
|
<B> Previous:</B> <A HREF="node129.html">Configuring the r Commands</A>
|
|
<BR> <P>
|
|
<H1><A NAME="SECTION0012000000">The Network Information System</A></H1>
|
|
<P>
|
|
<A NAME="nis"></A>
|
|
<A NAME="4903"></A>
|
|
<A NAME="5312"></A>
|
|
<A NAME="5313"></A>
|
|
<A NAME="5314"></A>
|
|
<A NAME="4907"></A>
|
|
<A NAME="4908"></A>
|
|
<A NAME="4909"></A>
|
|
<P>
|
|
When you are running a local area network, your overall goal is usually
|
|
to provide an environment to your users that makes the network
|
|
transparent. An important stepping stone to this end is to keep vital
|
|
data such as user account information synchronized between all hosts.
|
|
We have seen before that for host name resolution, a powerful and
|
|
sophisticated service exists, being DNS. For others tasks, there is no
|
|
such specialized service. Moreover, if you manage only a small LAN with
|
|
no Internet connectivity, setting up DNS may not seem worth the trouble
|
|
for many administrators.
|
|
<P>
|
|
This is why Sun developed NIS, the <em>Network Information System</em>.
|
|
NIS provides generic database access facilities that can be used to
|
|
distribute information such as that contained in the passwd and
|
|
groups files to all hosts on your network. This makes the
|
|
network appear just as a single system, with the same accounts on all
|
|
hosts. In a similar fashion, you can use NIS to distribute the hostname
|
|
information form /etc/hosts to all machines on the network.
|
|
<P>
|
|
NIS is based on RPC, and comprises a server, a client-side library, and
|
|
several administrative tools. Originally, NIS was called <em>Yellow
|
|
Pages</em>, or YP, which is still widely used to informally refer this
|
|
service. On the other hand, Yellow Pages is a trademark of British
|
|
Telecom, which required Sun to drop that name. As things go, some
|
|
names stick with people, and so YP lives on as a prefix to the names
|
|
of most NIS-related commands such as ypserv, ypbind,
|
|
etc.
|
|
<P>
|
|
<A NAME="4917"></A>
|
|
<A NAME="4918"></A>
|
|
<A NAME="5315"></A>
|
|
<A NAME="5316"></A>
|
|
Today, NIS is available for virtually all , and there are even
|
|
free implementations of it. One is from the BSD Net-2 release, and has
|
|
been derived from a public domain reference implementation donated by
|
|
Sun. The library client code from this release has been in the GNU
|
|
libc for a long time, while the administrative programs have only
|
|
recently been ported to by Swen Thümmler.<A HREF="footnode.html#5317"><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="gif" SRC="foot_motif.gif"></A> An NIS server is missing from the reference implementation. Tobias
|
|
Reber has written another NIS package including all tools and a server;
|
|
it is called yps.<A HREF="footnode.html#5318"><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="gif" SRC="foot_motif.gif"></A>
|
|
<P>
|
|
<A NAME="4932"></A>
|
|
<A NAME="4933"></A>
|
|
<A NAME="5319"></A>
|
|
Currently, a complete rewrite of the NIS code called NYS is being done
|
|
by Peter Eriksson,<A HREF="footnode.html#5320"><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="gif" SRC="foot_motif.gif"></A> which supports both plain NIS and Sun's much revised NIS+. NYS
|
|
not only provides a set of NIS tools and a server, but also adds a whole
|
|
new set of library functions which will most probably make it into the
|
|
standard libc eventually. This includes a new configuration scheme
|
|
for hostname resolution that replaces the current scheme using
|
|
host.conf. The features of these functions will be discussed
|
|
below.
|
|
<P>
|
|
This chapter will focus on NYS rather than the other two packages, to which
|
|
I will refer as the ``traditional'' NIS code. If you do want to run any of
|
|
these packages, the instructions in this chapter may or may not be enough.
|
|
To obtain additional information, please get a standard book on NIS, such
|
|
as Hal Stern's <em>NFS and NIS</em> (see-[<A HREF="#sternnfs"></A>]).
|
|
<P>
|
|
For the time being, NYS is still under development, and therefore standard
|
|
utilities such as the network programs or the login program
|
|
are not yet aware of the NYS configuration scheme. Until NYS is merged
|
|
into the mainstream libc you therefore have to recompile all these
|
|
binaries if you want to make them use NYS. In any of these applications'
|
|
Makefiles, specify -lnsl as the last option before
|
|
libc to the linker. This links in the relevant functions from
|
|
libnsl, the NYS library, instead of the standard C-library.
|
|
<P>
|
|
<BR> <HR>
|
|
<UL>
|
|
<LI> <A HREF="node131.html#SECTION0012100000">Getting Acquainted with NIS</A>
|
|
<LI> <A HREF="node132.html#SECTION0012200000">NIS versus NIS+</A>
|
|
<LI> <A HREF="node133.html#SECTION0012300000">The Client Side of NIS</A>
|
|
<LI> <A HREF="node134.html#SECTION0012400000">Running a NIS Server</A>
|
|
<LI> <A HREF="node135.html#SECTION0012500000">Setting up a NIS Client with NYS</A>
|
|
<LI> <A HREF="node136.html#SECTION0012600000">Choosing the Right Maps</A>
|
|
<LI> <A HREF="node137.html#SECTION0012700000">Using the passwd and group Maps</A>
|
|
<LI> <A HREF="node138.html#SECTION0012800000">Using NIS with Shadow Support</A>
|
|
<LI> <A HREF="node139.html#SECTION0012900000">Using the Traditional NIS Code</A>
|
|
</UL>
|
|
<HR><A HREF="node1.html"><IMG WIDTH=65 HEIGHT=24 ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="contents" SRC="contents_motif.gif"></A> <BR>
|
|
<B> Next:</B> <A HREF="node131.html">Getting Acquainted with NIS</A>
|
|
<B>Up:</B> <A HREF="nag.html">The Network Administrators' Guide</A>
|
|
<B> Previous:</B> <A HREF="node129.html">Configuring the r Commands</A>
|
|
<P><ADDRESS>
|
|
<I>Andrew Anderson <BR>
|
|
Thu Mar 7 23:22:06 EST 1996</I>
|
|
</ADDRESS>
|
|
</BODY>
|
|
</HTML>
|