NIS &Automount

[manu_15]

Hi All,

What is the server and clent setup( configuartion files and entries) for the following scenario...

All my clients should get authenticate by NIS sever and also mount there home directories from the server...

Thanks in advance......

[Devender Khatana]

Hi Manu,

Have a detailed look at this.

http://docs.hp.com/en/B1031-90043/index.html

HTH,
Devender

[Victor Fridyev]

Hi,

Basically, these are two independent questions.
In order to provide normal NIS service, you have to have NIS slave servers in each subnet, if you have your clients in different subnets. In any case, it's not a bad idea to build a couple of NIS slave servers. If you don't have enough experience, build all this via SAM.
In order to have NFS access, also build it with SAM, mount home directories to same directory name (e.g. /users) and build homedirs for each users as /users/username.

Good Luck

[manu_15]

thanks for the replies...

But still I'm not clear How we can make setup like a client should authenticate from the NIS server and also mounts its home directory from the nfs server simultaneously.
Could anybody please explain me the configuration files entry details for the client system and servers.

thanks in advance

[Victor Fridyev]

In order to configure NFS automount, you need either to edit /etc/auto_master and /etc/rc.config.d/nfsconf or to work with SAM.
In order to configure NIS-client, (if you have a NIS-Master) edit /etc/rc.config.d/namesvrs accordingly or use SAM.

HTH

PS. I repeat, these issues are independent, so you can configure them independently as well.

[Florian Heigl (new acc)]

I'm no real NIS user, You might want to get both manuals from http://docs.hp.com and NFS & NIS by O'reilly.


you have to declare a NIS master server, which will be the one to hold the central user / group / automount 'maps' (files, that is), which will be collected by your client systems.
you probably want to have at least one nis slave which is a mirror of the configuration data. From what I remember, some people configure some or all hosts to be NIS slaves.

furthermore, a simply setup would be modifying /etc/nsswitch.conf so that user and group entries get read from the nis server

Your /etc/passwd would look along the following lines:

root:[DESgarbagepasswordorshadow]:0:0 ...
+:+

the '+' tells the client to fetch all other info from the nis server.

You definitely want to exclude an administrative account in order to have access to the host in case of NIS failure.

I have to ask You to search for some more information, it's been about 5 years since I've played around with NIS.

One more thing - much more serious:
Actually NIS and NFS is a wonderful security hole in Your system, as big to make me wonder if a breakin can even be considered illegal. :)
Also it's completely incompatible with any useful password encryption scheme. (At least have a different root password on all NIS master/slave systems)

Please simply use LDAP, by now it's more proven than NIS, more fault-tolerant and safer by a magnitude.

florian