Setting Up NIS Clients

The two methods for configuring a client machine to use NIS as its naming service are explained below.

Note - The Solaris operating system does not support a configuration in which a NIS client and a Native LDAP client co-exist on the same client machine.

• ypinit. The recommended method for configuring a client machine to use NIS is to login to the machine as root and run ypinit -c.

  # ypinit -c

  You will be asked to name NIS servers from which the client obtains naming service information. You can list as many master or slave servers as you want. The servers that you list can be located anywhere in the domain. It is a better practice to first list the servers closest (in network terms) to the machine, than those that are on more distant parts of the net.

• Broadcast method. An older method of configuring a client machine to use NIS to log in to the machine as root, set the domain name with the domainname command, then run ypbind.

  ypstart will automatically invoke the NIS client in broadcast mode (ypbind -broadcast), if the /var/yp/binding/`domainname`/ypservers file does not exist.

  # domainname doc.com
  # mv /var/yp/binding/`domainname`/ypservers /var/yp/binding/`domainname`\
  /ypservers.bak
  # ypstart

  When you run ypbind, it searches the local subnet for an NIS server. If it finds a subnet, ypbind binds to it. This search is referred to as broadcasting. If there is no NIS server on the client's local subnet, ypbind fails to bind and the client machine is not able to obtain namespace data from the NIS service.

Note - For reasons of security and administrative control it is preferable to specify the servers a client is to bind to in the client's ypservers file rather than have the client search for servers through broadcasting. Broadcasting slows down the network, slows the client, and prevents you from balancing server load by listing different servers for different clients.