Solaris Network Information Services (NIS) Implementation

Due to its size mini-tutorial was moved to a separate page

There is also older  Solaris NIS Minitutorial

NEWS CONTENTS

• 20070104 : Solaris Naming Services Architecture Solaris DNS Architecture Overview by Tom Bialaski, Michael Haines. ( Solaris Naming Services Architecture Solaris DNS Architecture Overview, Jan 4, 2007 )
• 20070104 : The Jem Report - Solaris 10 a collection of great, new, unique features ( The Jem Report - Solaris 10 a collection of great, new, unique features, )
• 20040406 : NETSYS.COM - Sun Managers Mailing List Archives ( NETSYS.COM - Sun Managers Mailing List Archives, Apr 6, 2004 )
• 20040406 : http://www.itworld.com/Comp/3966/NWW010409infra/ ( http://www.itworld.com/Comp/3966/NWW010409infra/, )

Old News ;-)

[Jan 4, 2007] Solaris Naming Services Architecture Solaris DNS Architecture Overview By Tom Bialaski, Michael Haines.

Dec 6, 2001.( Prentice Hall) Reading this chapter is not an absolute requirement for deployment of LDAP, but if you become familiar with some of the architectural nuances, you can better understand broader deployment strategies. Each naming service has its own unique characteristics which may dictate how you deploy them. Although the focus of this BluePrint is LDAP, it is helpful to understand the feature set of legacy Solaris naming services to see how this new technology compares.

This is a sample chapter from Solaris and LDAP Naming Services: Deploying LDAP in the Enterprise.

1. Evolution of Solaris Naming Services
2. NIS and Files Coexistence
3. NIS and DNS Coexistence
4. Solaris Naming Service Switch
5. Solaris Naming Service Switch Architecture
6. NIS Architecture Overview
7. NIS Client Server Architecture
8. How NIS Clients Bind to the NIS Server
9. NIS Maps
10. NIS High Availability Architecture Features

The Jem Report - Solaris 10 a collection of great, new, unique features

Prior to the launch event I got some suggestions from Solaris sysadmins who had specific problems with previous versions of Solaris and had switched to other operating systems where they could. I took the issues mentioned in this SysAdmin to SysAdmin column and the comment attached to it, plus some other notes, and compiled the following list of issues, which several Solaris engineers addressed point by point:

• Solaris is too complex. This was described by the Solaris hackers as being an engineering problem that has been solved by introducing better technology -- namely, DTrace to replace other less specific command-line tools, X.org to replace the aging Xsun server, a more streamlined installation procedure, and better documentation. "Documentation is never an afterthought for us," Cantrill told me.
• If a user belongs to more than 15 groups, the system dies. Cantrill told me that this has long been a tunable parameter in Solaris. "Such that it exists at all, the limitation is due to a protocol restriction in NFS. By default, Solaris is configured to cooperate with other vendors' NFS implementations -- which means setting the number of supplementary groups to 15."
• NIS netgroups have a size limitation; this forces messy netgroups. This is due to an underlying DBM database issue; the database has a size limit of 1,024 bytes. The best solution is to use LDAP instead.
• If one machine is in two netgroups and both groups have mount privileges, the NFS server crashes. The Solaris engineers tested this and didn't find the problem; furthermore they had no record of this ever being a bug or problem with any previous editions of Solaris.
• GNOME is poorly implemented. GNOME support has been greatly improved in Solaris 10. The version that ships with the initial release is 2.6.1, and it now uses the Java Desktop System theme by default.
• The version of Netscape included with Solaris is old. Sun has abandoned Netscape in favor of Mozilla.
• Solaris has a poor LDAP implementation. A great deal of work has gone into improving LDAP in Solaris 10. The new implementation is of a much higher quality and has expanded features over previous Solaris implementations.
• If you set up the system to authenticate to NIS, then start LDAP, the system crashes. This bug has been fixed in Solaris 10.
• Solaris is slow. Solaris 10 includes an optimized TCP/IP stack, which now scales much better on multi-CPU systems. Additionally, Solaris 10 has specific performance enhancements for UltraSPARC IIIi and IV systems that can increase performance by as much as 20%.

[Apr 6, 2004] NETSYS.COM - Sun Managers Mailing List Archives

• To: "Sunmanagers (E-mail)" <[email protected]>
• Subject: SUMMARY: using Active Directory with Solaris
• From: "Corbett Waddingham" <[email protected]>
• Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2004 15:44:12 -0700

---

Hello all,

Sometime ago, I posed a question about how to get Solaris to work with Active
Directory. After several false starts, I finally found the answer: Microsoft's
Services for UNIX (SFU). SFU is a software suite which extends the Active
Directory schema, allowing various services to run out of AD for UNIX servers,
including (wait for it....) NIS. So far, it's working fairly well, with some
limitations. Here's a list of the gotchas I've encountered so far:

1) If you have an existing AD tree, you have to modify each individual user to
use SFU by opening their properties, choosing the "UNIX Attributes" tag, and
adding their UNIX account information (UID, GID, home, shell, and NIS domain).
Needless to say, this is tedious in large organizations. I'm lucky, I only
have about 100 users, I can't imagine someone with 10,000 going through this
willingly.

2) Once the UNIX attributes have been set, you have to reset the password of
the user before you can sync their account up in NIS. Presumably because AD
stores passwords in a one way encryption, which is neither crypt nor MD5.
3) If you have/want multiple NIS domains, you'll have to have multiple NT
domains. Each NT domain gets mapped to a single NIS domain, which must be the
same name, which requires one PDC for each domain. You can, however, control
multiple domains through one AD forest, so the administration isn't too bad,
as long as you have extra machines for this purpose.

4) Not all of the common features of NIS are easily supported, but they are
all there. The passwd map is controlled through the user management GUI,
however all other maps (netgroup, hosts, ethers, etc.) must be edited on the
command line. Potentially a problem for organizations which want to
standardize on one management tool. It should be possible to extend the AD
schema to include these other maps, however I have not yet gotten to that.
5) The master NIS server *must* be the AD server. There is a tool for
migrating an existing master db into the AD server, but so far as I can tell,
this is only useful if you have an existing NIS network, with no existing AD
servers.

6) I encountered some problems getting the master to talk to the slaves
properly. I found you have to make sure, when you list the slave servers in
the SFU console, to supply their FQDN. Just using the hostname by itself lead
to inconsistent communication.

It was surprisingly easy to install and configure SFU, and since it was using
NIS it was trivial to set up on the Solaris servers. Unfortunately, SFU
doesn't support NIS+, so for those organizations requiring that, this isn't
the answer. But for a smallish shop like mine with a need to standardize
usernames and passwords on both the NT and UNIX sides of the house, it was the
answer.

r/

Corbett Waddingham
Senior Systems Administrator
National Clearing Corp.
310-385-2257 phone
310-385-2225 fax
[email protected]

IBM Redbooks AIX - Migrating NIS Maps into LDAP

http://www.itworld.com/Comp/3966/NWW010409infra/ -- NIS with encryption

Recommended Links

Softpanorama Recommended

Top articles

Sites

IBM eServer Certification Study Guide - AIX 5L Communications

• Chapter 10 NIS Network Information Service (NIS) is a distributed database that allows you to maintain consistent configuration files throughout your network. NIS replaces replicated copies of common configuration files, such as /etc/passwd and /etc/hosts, with data maps for each file located on a central server. In this chapter the following topics are discussed:
• NIS configuration considerations.
• Startup of NIS.
• Managing NIS maps.

Network Information Services (NIS and NIS+) Guide - Network Information Service

Solaris 9 System Administration Guide/Naming and Directory Services (DNS, NIS, and LDAP) Chapter 7 Network Information Service (NIS) (Overview). This chapter provides an overview of the Network Information Service (NIS).

Freebsd handbook and freebsd beginners tutorial/NIS FreeBSD Handbook. Chapter 19 Advanced Networking. Written by Bill Swingle. Enhanced by Eric Ogren and Udo Erdelhoff.

SunService Tip Sheet for Sun NIS also at SunService Tip Sheet for Sun NIS

Cisco - Installing DNS on a Sun Running NIS

HP-UX-Sun Interoperability Cookbook - NIS

also at HP-UX-Sun Interoperability Cookbook - NIS

Protocols.com/SUN Protocols Family - MOUNT PMAP YP (NIS)

Using NIS in conjunction with DNS

Linux Implementation

• www.linux-nis.org

• Linux NIS(YP) Server and Tools The Network Information Service (NIS) provides a simple network lookup service consisting of databases and processes. It was formerly known as Sun Yellow Pages (YP).

FAQs and HOW-TOs

• Solaris NIS FAQ

• The Linux NIS(YP)-NIS+-NYS HOWTO

• NIS Tips (Red Hat)

Random Findings

8.16 nis -- Interface to Sun's NIS (Yellow Pages) Python interface

Securing NIS

IBM UNIX servers - Security for pSeries AIX 5L security enhancements

NIS/NIS+ enhancements
Network Information Services (NIS) infrastructure has been enhanced to support netgroups in LDAP and client support for shadow passwords (encrypted passwords in the /etc/security/passwd file).

Netgroups

1999 SUMMARY NIS and Netgroups behaviour

• Next message: Jacques-Olivier Haenni: "SUMMARY: Ultra10: interrupt level 4 not serviced"
• Previous message: Daren Eason: "Patch 105604-01 [SUMMARY]"
• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]

thanks to:

Ronald Loftin <[email protected]>
"David W. Blaine" <[email protected]>
"Salehi, Michael E" <[email protected]>
also thanks to:
Steve_Kilbane <[email protected]>
who didnt respond to my e-mail but has posted a summary of this problem
to the archives:

<--- snip --->
Turns out that netgroup works only with NIS running, and that using
it in .rhosts files is no problem. I'll also make the tentative
observation that the wisdom that follows applies certainly to netgroup
usage in .rhosts files, but not necessarily in other places (e.g.,
hosts.equiv, exports) because some of the rules I have to follow
(e.g., don't use capital letters) are rules I've seen violated in
other places without problems. That having been said:
</--- snip --->

my problem was simply that our Netgroup was in UCASE this is not a
problem for 2.6 or 2.7 only earlier versions.

Neal...

<--- original question --->
-> I have an NIS question,
->
-> we have a mixed solaris environment mostly 2.5.1 and 2.6 with a couple of
-> solaris 7 boxes. we are trying to implement the use of netgroups for
-> /.rhosts and /etc/hosts.equiv . the man pages for all vers. of the OS
-> state this can be done with + and - @NETGROUP entries. we have been able
-> to get this to work on both 2.6 and solaris 7 but 2.5.1 doesnt seem to
-> work.
->
-> here are what my files have in them:
->
-> +@MELALL
->
-> MELALL is a netgroup containing all of our trusted systems.
->
-> has anyone been able to get this to work on 2.5.1????
->
-> thanks,
->
-> Neal...
->
</--- original question --->

--
                                \\|//
                                (0~0)
----------------------------oooO-(_)-Oooo----------------------------
 Neal S. Pressman                        Raytheon Systems Company   
 System Administrator (MCAE)             528 Boston Post Road
 phone:  (978) 440-1273                  Sudbury, MA  01776
 fax:    (978) 440-2684                  ms 4-1-283
 E-mail:  [email protected] / [email protected]
____________________________________Oooo.____________________________
                             .oooO  (___)

Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes :  Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce :  Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS :  Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development :  Scripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month :  How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater�s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D

The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.

Last modified: March 12, 2019