Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 16.5
NIS+ Tables
Table
Description
auto_home
Location of user's home directories
auto_master
AutoFS map information
bootparams
Location of root, swap, and dump partitions for diskless
workstations
cred
Credentials for NIS+ principals
ethers
Ethernet addresses of systems
group
Group name, GID, and member information
hosts
Hostnames and network (IP) addresses
mail_aliases
Mail addresses and aliases
netgroup
Network groups and members defined in the domain
netmasks
Netmasks associated with known networks
networks
Networks and their associated names
passwd
Password information for user accounts
protocols
IP protocols used within the domain
rpc
RPC program numbers for RPC services used within the domain
services
IP services and their port numbers
timezone
Time zone of workstations in the domain
Summary
Solaris 9 supports six name services that provide a central location for stor-
ing information used by users and systems to communicate with each other
across the network. The name service not only stores the information, but
also provides mechanisms to manage and access that information.
The
/etc
files, NIS, and NIS+ are considered enterprise-level naming serv-
ices, whereas FNS, DNS, and LDAP are considered global-level naming
services. Of these, DNS is the only name service used by the Internet.
The name service switch is used to determine which naming services to be
used and the order in which they should be queried.
NIS is a distributed name service. It is a mechanism for identifying and locat-
ing network objects and resources. It provides a uniform storage and
retrieval method for network-wide information in a platform-independent
manner. The data files (called
maps
) can be distributed among NIS servers to
improve availability but can still be managed and updated from a central
location.
