The nsswitch.conf File
The default nsswitch.conf file that is installed with the Solaris software is determined by which naming service you select during the installation process. Each line identifies a particular type of network information, such as host, password, and group, along with the information source, such as NIS+ tables, NIS maps, the DNS hosts table, or local /etc. When you chose a naming service, the switch template file for that service is copied to create the new nsswitch.conf file. For example, if you choose NIS, the nsswitch.nis file is copied to create a new nsswitch.conf file.
An nsswitch.conf file is automatically loaded into every machine's /etc directory by the Solaris 9 release software, along with the following alternate (template) versions.
These alternate template files contain the default switch configurations used by the NIS+ and NIS services, local files, and LDAP. No default file is provided for DNS, but you can edit any of these files to use DNS. When the Solaris software is first installed on a machine, the installer selects the machine's default naming service. During installation, the corresponding template file is copied to /etc/nsswitch.conf. For example, for a machine client using NIS, the installation process copies nsswitch.nis to nsswitch.conf.
If your network is connected to the Internet and users must access Internet hosts using DNS, you must enable DNS forwarding.
Unless you have an unusual namespace, the default template file as copied to nsswitch.conf should be sufficient for normal operation.
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