NFS Services Administrator's Guide

Troubleshooting NFS Services
Common Problems with NIS+
Chapter 8 325
If nisping -C Fails or Transaction Logs Are Not
Truncated
❏ Issue the following command to check the update status of your
replica servers:
nisping -u
❏ If you do not issue the nisping -Ca command regularly, your
transaction log may grow too large, and you may not have enough
disk space to checkpoint it.
Make sure every master server in your namespace has a cron job
that runs nisping -Ca at least once a day, during a time when the
network is not busy. The following example crontab file runs
nisping -Ca once a day, at 3:00 AM. It directs standard output and
standard error from the nisping command to the file
/tmp/nisping.log.
0 3 * * * /usr/lib/nis/nisping -Ca > /tmp/nisping.log 2&>1
The nisping -Ca command causes all servers of the domain to
update their tables with the changes in the transaction log and to
clear the transaction log.
❏ The most common cause of a checkpoint failure is lack of swap or
disk space. The checkpoint process creates a temporary copy of the
transaction log before it truncates the log and removes the
temporary copy. Check your available swap and disk space, and free
up all that you can. Remove core files. If necessary, configure more
swap space.
❏ One or more replica servers may be down. Logs are not cleared on a
master server until all replicas for the master’s domain have been
updated. If a replica server is going to be down or out of service for a
period of time, issue the nisrmdir -s command to remove it as a
replica.
❏ Make sure the /var/nis/hostname.log file exists. Make sure it is
readable and that you are allowed to write to it.
❏ Check for error messages in syslog. Appendix A lists the NIS+ error
messages, their causes, and the actions you can take to resolve them.