Thanks to all the replies I received about an NIS server binding to another
server on the network rather than its own "ypserv" process.
As many people pointed out, "ypbind" is doing what it is supposed to:
broadcasting and binding to the first server to respond. At the time
when "ypbind" is invoked on the server, the "ypserv" process may not be
fully initialized or the machine is busy starting other daemons, so that
an NIS server on the network responds first.
The problem is that if the other NIS server goes down, the first machine
hangs until it can re-bind to another server. I've noticed that at this
point, it still does not bind to itself - it finds yet another slave server
to bind to. It seems counter-intuitive that an NIS server should block
in this situation, but that's the way it is.
"ypbind" can be invoked with the "-ypsetme" switch, to allow using the
"ypset" command to explicitly name the host to bind to. However, some
people have pointed out that the "-ypsetme" switch is a documented
security hole, so it's best not to use it.
Another suggestion was to put a "sleep" in /etc/rc.local between the
"ypserv" and "ypbind" invocations, but there is no guarantee that this
will work.
Thanks to all who responded...
-- Dave Rubin Systems Manager Polytechnic University drubin@poly.edu
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