Two-Minute Drill

Understanding Naming Services

q	The DNS is used to resolve IP domain names to IP addresses for any machine on the Internet.
q	The NIS and NIS+ naming services are used to centralize the management of the network (LAN) information. NIS+ has a hierarchical namespace and offers additional features such as authentication, whereas NIS has a flat namespace.
q	LDAP unifies the naming service and the directory service and is more appropriate in a read-intensive naming environment.
q	The nsswitch.conf file is used to coordinate the use of different naming services on your system.

Working with NIS

q	In NIS, network information is stored in files called maps, which are in the ndbm format.
q	The maps are created and updated only on a master server, from which the information propagates to the slave servers.
q	The ypinit command is used to set up the master server, the slave servers, and the clients for NIS. It also builds a fresh set of NIS maps from the source files cited in the Makefile.

Configuring the Clients

q	You can set up an NIS client by using the ypinit -c command.
q	The DNS configuration information used by the DNS client exists in the resolv.conf file.
q	You can set up an LDAP client by using the ldapclient command.
q	The naming service cache daemon is nscd, which is automatically started when the system is booted.
q	You can use the getent command to get a list of entries from the administrative databases, such as /etc/nsswitch.conf, /etc/passwd, and /etc/inet/hosts.