Account and host file Replication with NIS+?

[Dale Waines]

Hi All,

I am running a MC Service Guard cluster with OVOPS and NNM as my primary applications. Can anyone suggest a method where I can replicate user accounts, user home dirs and host file entries. I was told maybe I should look into NIS+?

Thanks in advance
Dale

[A. Clay Stephenson]

NIS (or NIS+) don't really replicate accounts, hosts, and home directories but rather these are managed in one place and maps are provided for a domain.

NIS works well under MC/SG for managaing account and hosts and in fact is is really not even necessary than the NIS servers be running on the same nodes as you are running MC/SG. It is necessary that you have at least a master server and one slave server so that NIS will always be available.

The way NIS traditionally handles home directories is by managing the automounter mount. That way, no matter where 'tom' logins, his home directory is '/home/tom' but /home/tom may be on another machine far away. It still is /home/tom to him whether it's an NFS mount or a local directory. The /home directory is thus not replicated because it really exuists on only one box - this is not a good solution for you because if that one server isn't available then you have no home directories. Of course, NFS could be made into a package and could be made highly available.

I would tend towards letting NIS manage logins, groups, services, and hosts BUT use rdist to actually distribute homedirs. Man rdist for details.

[Chris Wong]

Don't start using NIS+:
NIS+ will not be available on HP-UX 11.31, but it will be supported
on HP-UX 11.23, scheduled to be released in June 2003, the last operating environment release on which NIS+ is offered.

If you are using NIS+, the recommendation is to migrate to LDAP-UX.

- Chris

[NMCI Group]

Will LDAP-UX handle both accounts and hosts? Will it also handle automounter maps? I am currently using NIS+ and would like to be prepared for the future if I am going to have to convert.

Thanks!