5 Using Nis; Configuring Nis Servers - Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 10 SP2 - INSTALLATION AND ADMINISTRATION Installation Manual

Using NIS
As soon as multiple UNIX systems in a network want to access common resources, it
becomes important that all user and group identities are the same for all machines in
that network. The network should be transparent to users: whatever machines they use,
they always find themselves in exactly the same environment. This can be done by
means of NIS and NFS services. NFS distributes file systems over a network.
NIS (Network Information Service) can be described as a database-like service that
provides access to the contents of /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, and /etc/group
across networks. NIS can also be used for other purposes (making the contents of files
like /etc/hosts or /etc/services available, for example), but this is beyond
the scope of this introduction. People often refer to NIS as YP, because it works like
the network's "yellow pages."

35.1 Configuring NIS Servers

To distribute NIS information across networks, you can either have one single server
(a master) that serves all clients, or you can have NIS slave servers requesting this in-
formation from the master and relaying it to their respective clients.
• To configure just one NIS server for your network, proceed with Section 35.1.1,
"Configuring a NIS Master Server" (page 660).
• If your NIS master server should export its data to slave servers, set up the master
server as described in Section 35.1.1, "Configuring a NIS Master Server" (page 660)
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Using NIS 659