NFS Services Administrator's Guide

Configuring and Administering NIS
Overview of NIS
Chapter 4 147
Overview of NIS
NIS allows you to administer the configuration of many hosts from a
central location. Common configuration information, which would have
to be maintained separately on each host in a network without NIS, can
be stored and maintained in a central location and propagated to all of
the nodes in the network.
Information Managed by NIS
By default, NIS manages the following configuration files:
• /etc/hosts, a file that maps internet addresses to host names.
• /etc/passwd, a list of the users on your system, along with their
passwords, home directories, and other information.
• /etc/group, a list of groups of users.
• /etc/netgroup, a list of NFS netgroups, which are groups of host
names or user names used for allowing or denying access to systems
and services.
• /etc/services, a file that associates network services with their
port numbers and protocols.
• /etc/protocols, a file that associates network protocols with
protocol numbers.
• /etc/networks, a list of network names and numbers.
• /etc/rpc, a file that maps RPC program names to program
numbers.
• /etc/auto_master, an NFS automounter map that lists the direct
and indirect automounter maps and their mount points.
• /etc/mail/aliases, a list of sendmail aliases.
• /etc/publickey, a list of secure RPC encryption keys.
• /etc/netid, a list of secure RPC netnames (unix.UID@domainname
or unix.hostname@domainname) for users and hosts outside your
NIS domain.