NIS

Introduction

NIS stands for Network Information Service, and is a service that provides information, such as accounts and passwords.

I have set up NIS on my home network to make life a bit easier, especially when using NFS (Networking File System), where information about users and groups are vital for access to the files.

A good book on this subject is Managing NFS and NIS from O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/nfs2/)

Setting up a NIS server on a RedHat 7.3 system

First make sure that you have installed the ypserv and portmap packages.

Now edit the file /var/yp/Makefile. One thing you want to edit here is what files to create NIS maps from. This is done with the all directive as seen below. In my case I choose to just store passwd and group

# If you don't want some of these maps built, feel free to comment
# them out from this list.

all:  passwd group
        # hosts rpc services netid protocols mail \
        # netgrp shadow publickey networks ethers bootparams printcap \
        # amd.home auto.master auto.home auto.local passwd.adjunct \
        # timezone locale netmasks

Edit the file /var/yp/securenets. In my case it looks like this

#
# securenets    This file defines the access rights to your NIS server
#               for NIS clients. This file contains netmask/network
#               pairs. A clients IP address needs to match with at least
#               one of those.
#
#               One can use the word "host" instead of a netmask of
#               255.255.255.255. Only IP addresses are allowed in this
#               file, not hostnames.
#
# Always allow access for localhost
255.0.0.0       127.0.0.0

# This line gives access to the local network.
255.255.255.0   192.168.0.0

You may also edit the /etc/ypserv.conf file. Take a look at it and adjust if needed.
In the file /etc/sysconfig/network add NISDOMAIN=<value>, where <value> is the NIS domain name. In my case I chose home.rpz as this is my ordinary domain name for my home network.
Now start portmapper, if not running, and then start ypserv and yppasswdd. Look in the /var/log/message file for errors etc.
Check with the command rpcinfo -p if ypserv is running.
Next, generate the NIS maps using the command /usr/lib/yp/ypinit -m
You now have a running NIS server!
Remember to update the NIS maps each time a source file is updated, in my case passwd or group. This is done by running make in the /var/yp directory.

Setting up a NIS client on a RedHat 7.3 system

To be written...