65.4 Using NIS

NIS is used to share password files among a collection of machines. This ensures all users have access to all machines and have the same user id and group ids. The group of machines is referred to with a domain name (nothing to do with a network domain name though). One machine in the group must be a master server and the rest are nis clients of that server. You can also have slave servers but we’ll ignore that one for now.

65.4.0.1 Setting Up The Master Server

To set up the master NIS server on Caravan:

  caravan$ wajig install nis

You will be asked to name the nis domain. You can call it anything and later edit it in /etc/defaultdomain. Let’s call it ktnet (it has no formal relationship to the network domain name).

%% Since NIS does not use DNS make sure all hosts on the network are %% properly listed in /etc/hosts as in:

%%

%%   127.0.0.1       localhost
%%   155.229.8.151    velox.togaware.com alpine
%%   155.229.8.152    prefect.togaware.com prefect
%%   155.229.8.153    cepheus.togaware.com cephz
%%   155.229.8.154    plymouth.togaware.com plymz
%% ```

In the file `/etc/default/nis` set `NISSERVER=master` to
identify `caravan` as the master server. 

To restrict who can access you NIS server add your local network
number to the file `/etc/ypserv.securenets`:


```bash
  # Restrict to local network
  255.255.255.0 192.168.0.0

The password files on the server do not need to be changed.

Now restart the NIS server:

  $ wajig restart nis

Set up the server:

  # /usr/lib/yp/ypinit -m

You will be asked to list all of your servers (just caravan for now).

This essentially builds the maps from the current password file on caravan. Note that you can’t use the nis maps on caravan itself - don’t remove the users from caravan’s password file!


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