Chapter Summary


NIS (Network Information Service) simplifies the management of common administrative files by maintaining them in a central database and having clients contact the database server to retrieve information from the database. The network that NIS serves is called an NIS domain. Each NIS domain has one master server; larger networks may have slave servers.

NIS derives the information it offers from local configuration files, such as /etc/passwd and /etc/hosts. These files are called source files or master files. Before NIS can store the information contained in a source file, it must be converted to dbm-format files, called maps. The ypcat and ypmatch utilities display information from NIS maps.

The yppasswd utility replaces the functionality of passwd on clients when you are using NIS to authenticate passwords. The /etc/ypserv.conf file, which holds NIS server configuration information, specifies options and access rules for the NIS server. To enhance system security, you can create a /var/yp>/securenets file, which prevents unauthorized systems from sending RPC requests to the NIS server and retrieving NIS maps.




A Practical Guide to Red Hat Linux
A Practical Guide to Red HatВ® LinuxВ®: Fedoraв„ў Core and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (3rd Edition)
ISBN: 0132280272
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 383

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