NIS Question HP-UX v3

[AZayed]

Dears,
Good day,

I'm trying to create an NIS system. I did a lot of things but I have few question.

1) Accourding to HP , HP-UX v3 support shadow file but it doesn't work with me, I change the configuration in namesrvs file to 1 modfiy the parmenter for ypshadowd to -D /etc/NIS witch contain both passwd and shadow

2) why I cannot reset the password for NIS user even I'm logging to NIS server as root account?

3) In case I want to make the user home directory on NFS server, can you provide me with guide what should I change to make the user able to login to any server and his home directory mounted automaticly.

4) I already have few systems use autofs service what should I do in case I need to make them NIS client?

5) When I login to smh I cannot find any users under NIS users, is there some missconfiguration I did?

6) Should I move my ASCII source maps to /var/yp/src instade of /etc/NIS ?

Thanks a lot.

[Matti_Kurkela · Accepted solution]

1.) "Doesn't work" is not a useful problem description.

Please describe in as much detail and accuracy as you can:

1. exactly what you're doing (the command lines you're using, etc.)
2. the result you're expecting
3. what actually happens instead (error messages etc.)

According to the man pages, the yppasswdd uses the "make" command to update the actual NIS maps after storing the updated password hash to the source map. So there should be a Makefile present to tell the "make" command what to do. The standard location /var/yp/src should contain a Makefile by default; if you use a custom location, you should copy the Makefile to it too, and edit any pathnames within it to suit the new location.

I don't have "ypshadowd" on my 11.31 system; but if it exists, I would expect it to be an adaptation of yppasswdd and work much the same way.

2.) Depending on your PATH setting, you might be using /sbin/passwd instead of /usr/bin/passwd. The former is a statically-linked "emergency version" of the passwd command, useful for fixing things when the /usr filesystem cannot be mounted or there is something wrong with the system libraries; the latter is the full-functionality version you should be using normally.

See also the request for detailed problem description in answer 1.)

3.) Your NFS server should be configured to export the home directories so that each of your servers can mount it. (If the home directory cannot be mounted manually, then autofs cannot do it either.) Then you can either permanently mount the entire exported set of home directories as a single NFS mount, or configure autofs to mount the home directories as necessary (either as a single block, or per-user).

4.) Strictly speaking, it is not necessary to change any autofs settings when starting to use NIS. You can use NIS without autofs, or vice versa. However, when using NIS, it is a common strategy to maintain the automount maps with NIS, so that they can be managed in a centralized fashion.

5.) No idea, I don't have a system which would actually have both NIS and SMH in use. Perhaps someone else knows?

6.) Your choice: it might be easier to achieve a fully functional set-up by using the HP-UX standard file locations. If you use custom locations, you will definitely learn all the requirements by the time you get it working, and will therefore gain a better understanding of your system. However, that path may be a long and painful one... and anyone else who might need to work on your systems (e.g. while you're on a well-earned vacation) might be confused by non-standard file locations.

My recommendation: in a safe testing environment, by all means experiment and try non-standard solutions to increase your understanding. But in systems that serve other people ("production" systems), stick to the standards unless you have a good reason to do otherwise.