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Linux Server Hacks, Volume Two
book

Linux Server Hacks, Volume Two

by William von Hagen, Brian K. Jones
December 2005
Beginner content levelBeginner
480 pages
13h 27m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Linux Server Hacks, Volume Two

Hack #8. Authenticate NFS-Lovers with NIS

If you're using NFS, using its companion authentication mechanism may be the right way to go.

The Network Information System (NIS) is a distributed authentication mechanism that was originally developed by Sun Microsystems and is most commonly used in conjunction with the file-sharing protocol NFS [Hack #56] . NIS enables all of the machines in a computing environment to share access to a centralized collection of authentication-related files and service configuration information, known as "maps." Each NIS map is typically provided in several different ways, each organized to optimize a specific type of access to that information, such as lookups by name or by some unique numeric component (such as being able to access a group map by group ID, a host's map by address, and so on).

Tip

NIS+, also from Sun Microsystems, is the successor to NIS. Much like LDAP, it organizes information hierarchically. Unfortunately, NIS+ never really caught on outside of Sun systems, and therefore few Unix and Unix-like operating systems (such as, for example, Linux) bother to support NIS+.

Installing NIS Clients and Servers

Most Linux distributions provide packages that include NIS client and server software, but if yours doesn't, or you simply want to install the latest and greatest, you'll need to build and install the following packages from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/net/NIS:

ypbind-mt

The client NIS daemon

ypserv

The NIS server

yp-tools

The standard ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596100825Errata Page