Linux Network Administrator's Guide, Second Edition

Setting Up an NIS Client with GNU libc

We will now describe and discuss the configuration of an NIS client using the GNU libc library support.

Your first step should be to tell the GNU libc NIS client which server to use for NIS service. We mentioned earlier that the Linux ypbind allows you to configure the NIS server to use. The default behavior is to query the server on the local network. If the host you are configuring is likely to move from one domain to another, such as a laptop, you would leave the /etc/yp.conf file empty and it would query on the local network for the local NIS server wherever it happens to be.

A more secure configuration for most hosts is to set the server name in the /etc/yp.conf configuration file. A very simple file for a host on the Winery’s network may look like this:

# yp.conf - YP configuration for GNU libc library.
#
ypserver vbardolino

The ypserver statement tells your host to use the host supplied as the NIS server for the local domain. In this example we’ve specified the NIS server as vbardolino. Of course, the IP address corresponding to vbardolino must be set in the hosts file; alternatively, you may use the IP address itself with the server argument.

In the form shown in the example, the ypserver command tells ypbind to use the named server regardless of what the current NIS domain may be. If, however, you are moving your machine between different NIS domains frequently, you may want to keep information for several domains in the yp.conf ...