NIS not running - map mail.aliases

[Jimmy Roux]

When I do:

cat |mailx -m -s ""

...the following message is return:

NIS map mail.aliases specified, but NIS not running: Socket operation on non-socket

I did not get this kind of message until my system crashed and have to replace the hard drive and rebuild my system.

What's causing this and how do I get rid of it without running NIS? Are there any alternatives besides e_mailing files using mailx?

Thank you.

Jimmy

[Sajid_1 · Accepted solution]

hello,
This is a quick solution:

Add this line on /etc/nsswitch.conf file:

aliases: files

[S.K. Chan]

What you got is probably due to the entry "aliases" in /etc/nsswitch.conf which expect value searches from NIS and thus causing this error when NIS is not running on your machine. Take a look at the file /etc/nsswitch. If you see "NIS" defined in the line that has "aliases:" (regardless of it's order), delete the word "NIS" so that what's remaining looks like ..
aliases: files
That should fix your problem. You can use "elm" besides "mailx" .. for example ..
$ elm -s Test skchan@abc.com < myfile

[Jimmy Roux]

Cool! Thank you Sajid/S.K.

I was acutally looking at this file /etc/nsswitch.conf, and told myself that it is configured so what it is complaining about... So, deleting nis on that aliases line work. Are there any consequences to deleting nis if I want NIS to run on this server in the future?

Cheers,

Jimmy

[Sajid_1]

hi again,

There is no problem for deleting the NIS entry from the file now. If the entry is there, then it searches for NIS maps and will error out as it is not configured on your server.

In future, if you are setting up NIS on this system and if you want to look at the NIS tables/maps, then you can add NIS after the 'files' entry or before that, depends up on your wish to assign priority.

HTH

[S.K. Chan]

The answer is it depends. If you want NIS to manage your mail.aliases file and on the client side you want the search to include that of the NIS map file then adding the "NIS" entry in /etc/nsswitch.conf will achieve that. It also depends on your preferred search order (local file vs NIS file).

[Jimmy Roux]

Thanks again guys!

Cheers,

Jimmy