unix help

[paul_y3k]

Anyone tell me NIS+ is ??

i know I can look on google and I am, but I find the quality of answers here so much better and I can ask questions !

[carl0s]

there are better places to ask these sorts of questions matey!! lol

I've never used NIS, but it's basically a lookup service for various things like usernames, hosts, et cetera.

 

For example, in your /etc/resolv.conf , which would normally have a list of nameservers (DNS) to use, the first line would be the "order" line, which would say:

 

order hosts,bind

 

this means that any name resolution should first look at the hosts file (/etc/hosts), and then go to the configured DNS server (bind being the Berkely Internet Name Daemon... the defacto DNS server).

 

Now, that line could say:

 

order hosts,nis,bind

 

meaning the configured NIS server would be used for host lookups (after the hosts file of course..)

 

A similar sort of thing applies to the /etc/passwd file, although I have no idea how it's configured. I guess on a Linux machine it would be configured though as a pam module. In this instance it makes far more sense, and can be thought of a little bit like a Windows NT PDC or simplified ctive Directory Server. Imagine a load of workstations on a network, well you wouldn't want to have to manually update the /etc/passwd file with username and passwords for each person who may feasably log onto a machine, so the machines would be configured to consult the NIS server for checking usernames and passwords.

 

I think that's the idea anyway. It may work in tanden with Kerberos somewhere, since krb actually does the job of authentication on a network, so it seems silly to me that NIS would reinvent that.

 

HTH. Definately worth googling or finding a good *nix forum.

[carl0s]

AFAIK NIS+ is a more secure variation of NIS.