Various functions in the C Library need to be configured to work
correctly in the local environment. Traditionally, this was done by
using files (e.g., /etc/passwd), but other nameservices (like the
Network Information Service (NIS) and the Domain Name Service (DNS))
became popular, and were hacked into the C library, usually with a fixed
search order (see frobnicate).
The GNU C Library contains a cleaner solution of this problem. It is
designed after a method used by Sun Microsystems in the C library of
Solaris 2. GNU C Library follows their name and calls this
scheme Name Service Switch (NSS).
Though the interface might be similar to Sun's version there is no
common code. We never saw any source code of Sun's implementation and
so the internal interface is incompatible. This also manifests in the
file names we use as we will see later.
