Network Information Service (NIS) B.11.31.02 Administrator's Guide

Table 1-2 NIS Commands (continued)
DescriptionCommand
Returns the name of the NIS server for the local client, or the name of the NIS master server
for one or more NIS maps. For more information, see ypwhich (1).
ypwhich
Transfers one or more NIS maps from a master server to the local slave server. A slave server
calls ypxfr when yppush is executed on the master server.
For more information, see ypxfr (1M).
ypxfr
Default NIS Source Files
Table 1-3 lists the source files that NIS uses by default for constructing the NIS maps.
Table 1-3 NIS Source Files
DescriptionNIS Source File
A file that maps Internet addresses to the host names. See nsswitch.conf (4)
or hosts(4).
/etc/hosts
A list of the users on the system, along with the associated passwords,
home directories, and other information. See passwd(4).
/etc/passwd
A list of group names, along with encrypted password and numerical
group ID. See group(4).
/etc/group
A file that associates network services with the port numbers and protocols
the services use. See services(4).
/etc/services
A file that associates network protocols with protocol numbers. See
protocols(4).
/etc/protocols
A file that associates IP addresses with official network names and aliases.
See networks(4).
/etc/networks
A list of Sendmail aliases. See aliases(5).
/etc/mail/aliases
A list of secure remote procedure calls’ (RPC) netnames
(unix.UID@domainname or unix.hostname@domainname) for users
and hosts outside the NIS domain.
/etc/netid
The information in these files is stored in the NIS databases automatically when you configure
an NIS master server. Other user-defined files can also be used with NIS to customize
configuration.
NIS Binding
In the NIS domain, associating a server with a particular client is called binding.
The ypbind daemon stores information that allows the client processes on the system to
communicate with the ypserv process. The ypbind daemon must run on every machine using
NIS services, both NIS servers and clients. The ypserv daemon may or may not be running on
an NIS client machine, but it must be running somewhere on the network or be available through
a gateway.
The ypinit command allows the user to specify a list of servers (in the order of preference) to
which the client can bind. Invoking the ypinit command with the -c option prompts the user
to construct a list of NIS servers, in the order of preference, to which the client will try to bind.
This list of NIS servers is stored in the /var/yp/binding/<domain_name>/ypservers file.
Information Flow in an NIS Network
Figure 1-2 illustrates the flow of information in an NIS network with a single domain.
14 Introduction