Datasheet

“main” (Installation and Administration) — 2004/6/25 — 13:29 — page 438 — #464

services Network services, used by getservent.

shadow Shadow passwords of users, used by getspnam;

see man 5 shadow.

Table 21.7: Conﬁguration Options for NSS Databases

files directly access ﬁles, for example, /etc/aliases

db access via a database

nis NIS, see also Section 21.9 on page 505

nisplus

dns can only be used as an extension for hosts and

networks

compat can only be used as an extension for passwd, shadow,

and group

/etc/nscd.conf

This ﬁle is used to conﬁgure nscd (name service cache daemon). See man 8

nscd and man 5 nscd.conf. By default, the system entries of passwd

and groups are cached by nscd. hosts is not cached by default, because

the mechanism in nscd to cache hosts causes the local system to be un-

able to trust forward and reverse lookup checks. Instead of asking nscd

to cache names, set up a caching DNS server.

If the caching for passwd is activated, it usually takes about ﬁfteen seconds

until a newly added local user is recognized. Reduce this waiting time by

restarting nscd with the command rcnscd restart.

/etc/HOSTNAME

Here is the host name without the domain name attached. This ﬁle is read

by several scripts while the machine is booting. It may only contain one

line in which the host name is set.

438 21.3. Manual Network Conﬁguration