Skip to Content
Linux Server Hacks, Volume Two
book

Linux Server Hacks, Volume Two

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

Hack #9. Sync LDAP Data with NIS

Run a script out of cron to help with a graceful transformation to LDAP.

An NIS-to-LDAP migration is a nontrivial event in any environment. If the switch were as simple as moving data from one place to another, most organizations would've done it by now. The reality in many production environments, large and small, is that some applications (and even appliances) do not yet support LDAP or don't support LDAP to the extent that we would like. Eventually, most places come to terms with LDAP's limitations and implement a "phase in" approach, which involves using LDAP where it is fully supported but keeping NIS around for those things that require it.

In those environments where the authentication source will be NIS for some legacy systems and LDAP for those newer systems that support it, the challenge becomes keeping the data synchronized between NIS and LDAP. Over the past couple of years, I have found several tools that attempt to solve this problem. One is a C program that, though it is amazingly generic, requires a whole bunch of flags that will look quite cryptic to some system administrators. Another solution consisted of a suite of tools that attempted to do too much and weren't very configurable. I was unable to make friends with these tools, as they seemed to make assumptions about my environment that would never be true.

In the end, I did find a Perl script online that had a very elementary structure that anyone could understand. It was clearly ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Linux Server Hacks

Linux Server Hacks

Rob Flickenger
Mastering CentOS 7 Linux Server

Mastering CentOS 7 Linux Server

Mohamed Alibi, BHASKARJYOTI ROY

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596100825Errata Page