NFS Services Administrator's Guide

Troubleshooting NFS Services
Common Problems with NIS+
Chapter 8328
If You Receive a “Corrupt Log” or “Corrupt Database”
Message
❏ Issue the following command to determine whether you have
multiple independent rpc.nisd processes running:
ps -ef | grep nisd
In normal operation, rpc.nisd may spawn child rpc.nisd processes,
and this causes no problem. However, if two parent rpc.nisd
processes are running on the same host at the same time, they will
overwrite each other’s data and corrupt logs and databases. (Two
parent rpc.nisd processes can be running only if someone started
one by hand.)
If you have more than one parent rpc.nisd process running, issue
the kill -9 processID command to kill all but one of them, and
then issue the ps -ef command again to make sure only one parent
process remains. If you are running rpc.nisd in NIS compatibility
mode (with the -Y or -B option), kill all independent
rpc.nisd_resolv processes as well.
If an NIS+ table is corrupt, restore it from your most recent backup
that contains an uncorrupted version. You can then use your
transaction logs to update the table with any changes that occurred
since the backup was made. However, if the transaction log is also
corrupt, you must recreate your NIS+ environment. You can do this
in one of two ways:
1. Restore the /var/nis directory and the /etc/.rootkey file from
a backup.
2. Recreate the NIS+ environment all over again, either from
current /etc files or from flat files, if you have been backing up
your databases to flat files.