Using NIS+

[Nisar Ahmad]

Hi There

I wander if I can utilise NIS+ for our huge company's users d/b on 30+ UNIX servers. Please let me know what are the banefits we can have and any suggestion or good documentation etc to start with.

Thanks in advance

Nisar

[Steven Schweda]

Possibly. How many different kinds of UNIX
are you running on those 30+ UNIX systems?

Benefits? Well, among other things, a user
can do one "passwd" command to change his
password everywhere, instead of doing it 30+
times.

[Nisar Ahmad]

We have HP-UX, AIX and Linux (Redhat). Nisar

[Dave Olker · Accepted solution]

Hello Nisar,

The first question I ask any customer who says they want to use NIS+ is: are you absolutely sure you need NIS+ for this? The reasons are many:

1) NIS+ is being obsoleted in HP-UX 11.31
2) Other vendors have already obsoleted NIS+
3) NIS+ is a huge beast to configure and administer
4) If all you want to do is share an /etc/passwd or /etc/group file among 30 computers, is there a reason why the legacy NIS, or better yet - LDAP - doesn't work for you?

As I said, most companies are moving away from NIS+ and recommending newer Name Service database technologies like LDAP to their customers. LDAP is available on HP-UX for managing many of the same backend databases that NIS+ did.

Most of the customers I talk to are working on migration plans from NIS or NIS+ to LDAP so I really wouldn't recommend implementing NIS+ unless there is a really good reason to do so. I'd either use LDAP or NIS.

Regards,

Dave

[Nisar Ahmad]

Hi Dave

Thanks a lot for your valuable comments. Would you be able to elaborate LDAP bit more please ? How I implemnt and which document I follow ?

Best regards

Nisar

[Dave Olker]

Hello Nisar,

Here is the link to the LDAP-UX Client documentation:

http://docs.hp.com/en/J4269-90051/index.html

That's the best place to read about what LDAP is and how to install/configure it on HP-UX systems.

Regards,

Dave