SUMMARY: NIS+ under Solaris

From: lbd@mhcnet.att.com
Date: Sat Feb 13 1993 - 00:52:53 CST


Hi, everyone. ..

Sorry for the lateness of my summary. I was hoping for more responses,
but it looks like not too many people have taken the plunge just yet...

My question was: which comes first, Solaris 2.x everywhere, or an
NIS+ domain?

I only had two responses, and they were split down the middle:
one for NIS+ first, one for Solaris 2.x first. Thanks for your
responses, Randy Huntzinger and miker at Swiss Bank Corp.

Some concerns and items of interest:

 - You don't need an NIS+ server on every network. True, as long as
   you don't need to have any NIS clients bind to an NIS+ server.
   NIS+ has a couple of options here. You can set it up in broadcast
   mode, so it does bind to whatever responds, but the better way is
   to set up a list of NIS+ servers. Since there is no broadcasting
   involved, you don't need a server on each LAN. However, NIS clients
   still need to broadcast.

 - Running NIS and NIS+ simultaneously could be a nightmare. I figure
   if I set things up correctly, I should be able to set up some
   programs to keep them in sync without too many headaches.

 - Many sites (including ours) use DNS to resolve host names, after
   the NIS maps have been consulted. While NIS+ does support this
   (with the dns option for hosts in /etc/nsswitch.conf), it probably
   won't work with NIS clients. Since the switch is done on the client,
   the NIS+ server won't serve the DNS information to anyone, assuming
   the clients get it themselves. NIS clients don't get it themselves,
   so they could be left out in the cold. They would have to be configured
   to retrieve DNS info themselves. I don't want any part of messing that
   much with 4.x machines when I'm going to ungrade them any day...

I'm still holding off at this point. I'll probably set up an NIS+ domain
with a couple of servers here and there and list those explicitly for
the Solaris 2.x machines' binding, then keep my NIS slaves intact for the 4.x
machines to bind to. Right now, I'm just running my 5.x machines as NIS
clients (only 2, so far).

Just FYI, I have read a lot of the administration documentation, including
most of the NIS+/DNS book. There's a lot there, so it's good in terms of
quantity, but the administration set looks to me like it was thrown together in
a hurry -- typos that should have been caught by proofreaders, plus some
indications to me that the people who wrote the stuff were working with
minimally detailed information. Just little things -- the big conceptual items are
fine. It looks nice, but I'll take accuracy over beauty any day...:-)

My own opinions, of course, unrelated to anything AT&T might think as a
living, breathing entity...

Leslie Dreyer Kalra
AT&T Bell Labs
Allentown, PA
lbd@aluxpo.att.com



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