adviceo on NIS and NFS

[Umapathy S]

Gurus,
I am trying for a NIS/NFS network. I plan to have the NIS server in one machine and NFS server in another machine. The third machine will be a client.
On thinking, I find some problems like which one should be started first, whether NIS server or NFS server? NFS server will be a NIS client to have the users. Any advice on this..
Are there any more drawbacks on this?

many thanks,
Umapathy

[Umapathy S]

Forget to add. The NFS server will host the home dirs of the NIS Users.

[Massimo Bianchi]

Hi Umapathy,
do you really need both of them ?

NIS+NFS is a very dangeroues mix, both of them are really frigile, and a problem on one of the two reflects immediatly to the other.

In my opinion, start with NIS, because you have to setup user, direct and indirect map and all the other stuff.

Why not use some more modern solution, like LDAP ?
How many users/server have you to set up ? Maybe some add-hoc script will be more reliable...
Personally i do not like NIS.

Good luck.
Massimo

[Umapathy S]

Massimo,
I am learning NIS/NFS and feel the best way for is to try it :-). Going towards my certification. I plan LDAP for the next learning and upgradation.

Now I am worried about the time between starting those systems. Which one should be started first, whether, NIS or NFS. If I need to introduce a time delay where should I do it?

thanks,
Umapathy

[Leif Halvarsson_2]

Hi,
Are you going to use NIS, not NIS+ ?
NIS is very simple to maintain but not as safe or flexible as NIS+ .

The NIS server should be started first, if not the clients will perhaps not boot (boot process hang in "Starting NIS client" unless you have disabled "Wait for NIS server" on the client. If possible you should also set up a NIS slave.

But I can't see any direct problems with your solution. NIS , NIS+ and NFS is very common in a UNIX enviroment.

[Umapathy S]

Thanks Leif, I am going for a plain NIS. The NFS server which hosts the home dirs of the NIS users will be a NIS Client. Is this scenario possible? I will boot the NIS Server followed by the NFS server and then a client (my small NIS domain contains 3 machines only). The fact why I am moving NFS to another machine is, there is not much space on the NIS Server to host the NFS server.

thanks,
Umapathy

[Leif Halvarsson_2]

Hi,


There should be no problem to set up the NFS server as a NIS client (I have done this on my NFS server).

[Bill Hassell]

Since NIS will be the authentication system, it should start first and never stop (this is a hard concept to understand if you've used PC's for any length of time). The NFS server must then start prior to anyone logging in since the HOME directories are there. And like the NIS server, it can never go down--otherwise, users will be stranded and bad things will happen. NFS does not depend on any resource in NIS so it is essentially independent. However, the NIS server will tell inform login where the user's HOME is located. For good measure, I would get a copy of the NFS Performance book by Dave Olker so you'll understand how complex NFS can be to keep stable.

[Umapathy S]

Bill, Thanks for the info.

I am eagerly waiting for your book to come out.

cheers
Umapathy

[Robert-Jan Goossens · Accepted solution]

Umapathy,

Maybe an idear to set up a nis slave server on your nfs server. That way users are not dependend anymore on one authentication server.

Robert-Jan.

[Umapathy S]

Thanks Robert-Jan. I thought about that also, but it would be a heavy!! setup for my small network. As part of learning I will try that too.

cheers
Umapathy