7.2. Setting up a NIS Client using Traditional NIS

For host lookups you must set (or add) "nis" to the lookup order line in your /etc/host.conf file. Please read the manpage "resolv+.8" for more details.

Add the following line to /etc/passwd on your NIS clients:

+::::::

You can also use the + and - characters to include/exclude or change users. If you want to exclude the user guest just add -guest to your /etc/passwd file. You want to use a different shell (e.g. ksh) for the user "linux"? No problem, just add "+linux::::::/bin/ksh" (without the quotes) to your /etc/passwd. Fields that you don't want to change have to be left empty. You could also use Netgroups for user control.

For example, to allow login-access only to miquels, dth and ed, and all members of the sysadmin netgroup, but to have the account data of all other users available use:

      +miquels:::::::
      +ed:::::::
      +dth:::::::
      +@sysadmins:::::::
      -ftp
      +:*::::::/etc/NoShell

Note that in Linux you can also override the password field, as we did in this example. We also remove the login "ftp", so it isn't known any longer, and anonymous ftp will not work.

The netgroup would look like

sysadmins (-,software,) (-,kukuk,)

IMPORTANT: The netgroup feature is implemented starting from libc 4.5.26. If you have a version of libc earlier than 4.5.26, every user in the NIS password database can access your linux machine if you run "ypbind" !