Miscellaneous Questions
Q1: What are the main features of NIS+?
Q2: What new functionality does NIS+ have?
Q3: What are the differences between NIS and NIS+?
A: NIS name space is a flat namespace, which means that it does not
support subdomains. Under NIS, only one domain is accesible from a
given host. In NIS+, the namespace is hierarchical. This hierarchical
structure is similar to the UNIX filesystem structure. Since the NIS+
namespace is hierarchical, it can be configured to conform with the
logical hierarchy of the organization. This means that you can create
subdomains for different levels of organizations.
In NIS, even for a small change in the map, the master server needs to
push the whole map to the slave servers. Whereas, in NIS+, the
database updates are incremental. This means that only changes in the
map are replicated to replica servers. Therefore, NIS+ database
updates are more efficient and less time consuming.
Another important difference between NIS and NIS+ is server binding.
In NIS, clients are hard bound to a specific server. During the bootup
time, the ypbind process on the client side binds to a specific
server. However, the NIS+ client library is not a seperate process.
In NIS, the ypwhich command can tell you to which specific server the
client is bound to, but that is not possible in NIS+. In other words,
the binding in nis+ is soft binding.
NIS maps can be searched by only one predefined searchable column.
NIS+ tables allow more than one searchable columns.
NIS supports UNIX groups and netgroups. NIS+ also supports the concept
of NIS+ group. One or more NIS+ users can be grouped together into a
NIS+ group. Multiple NIS+ groups can be defined, each with different
access and modification rights to the NIS+ namespace.
NIS+ also has much improved security:
NIS does not support authentication, authorization and secure RPC,
whereas NIS+ supports authentication, authorization and secure RPC.
Q: What is my network passwd?
A: In most cases, your network passwd should be the same as your login
passwd. When NIS+ is just getting setup, network passwds are often set
to 'nisplus'.
Q: Why can't I have machines and users with the same name?
A: All machines and users must have credentials created for them. If
you have a machine and a user with the same name, only one of them
will be able to have credentials. In case of a naming conflict of this
sort, you should change the machine's name you may have to recreate
credentials for the user and machine afterwards:
%% nisclient -c user
%% nisclient -c machine
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