NFS Services Administrator's Guide

Configuring and Administering NIS
Configuring and Administering an NIS Master Server
Chapter 4170
To Query BIND for Host Information After Querying
NIS
This section tells you how to set up server-side hostname fallback,
which causes your NIS servers to query BIND for host information after
querying NIS. A server will search the NIS hosts database first, but if
the hosts database does not contain the requested information, the
server will query the BIND name service. The server will return the host
information to the clients through NIS.
1. Configure your NIS servers as BIND name servers, or install an
/etc/resolve.conf file on each server that allows it to query a
BIND name server. See Installing and Administering Internet
Services for more information.
2. On the NIS master server, in the /var/yp/Makefile file, set the B
variable to -b, as follows:
B=-b
3. Issue the following command on the master server to change the
modification time on /etc/hosts so that make will regenerate the
hosts database:
/usr/bin/touch /etc/hosts
4. Issue the following commands to regenerate the NIS maps on the
master server and push them to the NIS slave servers:
cd /var/yp
/usr/ccs/bin/make
5. On all the NIS servers in your domain, change the hosts line in the
/etc/nsswitch.conf file to the following:
hosts: nis dns files
Hewlett-Packard recommends that you use the Name Service Switch on
your NIS clients instead of server-side hostname fallback. However, if
your NIS clients are PCs that do not have a feature like the Name
Service Switch, use the server-side hostname fallback described in this
section if you want to force BIND lookups after NIS lookups. See
“Configuring the Name Service Switch” on page 267.