NIS+ Standard Tables

Review the 17 standard NIS+ tables to make sure they suit the needs of your site. They are listed in Table 2-5. Table 2-6 lists the correspondences between NIS maps and NIS+ tables.

Do not worry about synchronizing related tables. The NIS+ tables store essentially the same information as NIS maps, but they consolidate similar information into a single table (for example, the NIS+ hosts table stores the same information as the hosts.byaddr and hosts.byname NIS maps). Instead of the key-value pairs used in NIS maps, NIS+ tables use columns and rows. (See Solaris Naming Setup and Configuration Guide.) Key-value tables have two columns, with the first column being the key and the second column being the value. Therefore, when you update any information, such as host information, you need only update it in one place, such as the hosts table. You no longer have to worry about keeping that information consistent across related maps.

Note the new names of the automounter tables:

• auto_home (old name: auto.home)

• auto_master (old name: auto.master)

The dots were changed to underscores because NIS+ uses dots to separate directories. Dots in a table name can cause NIS+ to mistranslate names. For the same reason, machine names cannot contain any dots. You must change any machine name that contains a dot to something else. For example, a machine named sales.alpha is not allowed. You could change it to sales_alpha or salesalpha or any other name that does not contain a dot.

To make the transition from NIS to NIS+, you must change the dots in your NIS automounter maps to underscores. You may also need to do this on your clients' automounter configuration files. See Table 2-5.

Table 2-5 NIS+ Tables

NIS+ Table	Information in the Table
hosts	Network address and host name of every workstation in the domain
bootparams	Location of the root, swap, and dump partition of every diskless client in the domain
passwd	Password information about every user in the domain
cred	Credentials for principals who belong to the domain
group	The group password, group ID, and members of every UNIX® group in the domain
netgroup	The netgroups to which workstations and users in the domain may belong
mail_aliases	Information about the mail aliases of users in the domain
timezone	The time zone of the domain
networks	The networks in the domain and their canonical names
netmasks	The networks in the domain and their associated netmasks
ethers	The ethernet address of every workstation in the domain
services	The names of IP services used in the domain and their port numbers
protocols	The list of IP protocols used in the domain
rpc	The RPC program numbers for RPC services available in the domain
auto_home	The location of all user's home directories in the domain
auto_master	Automounter map information
sendmailvars	Stores the mail domain

Table 2-6 Correspondences Between NIS Maps and NIS+ Tables

NIS Map	NIS+ Table	Notes
auto.home	auto_home
auto.master	auto_master
bootparams	bootparams
ethers.byaddr	ethers
ethers.byname	ethers
group.bygid	group	Not the same as NIS+ groups
group.byname	group	Not the same as NIS+ groups
hosts.byaddr	hosts
hosts.byname	hosts
mail.aliases	mail_aliases
mail.byaddr	mail_aliases
netgroup	netgroup
netgroup.byhost	netgroup
netgroup.byuser	netgroup
netid.byname	cred
netmasks.byaddr	netmasks
networks.byaddr	networks
networks.byname	networks
passwd.byname	passwd
passwd.byuid	passwd
protocols.byname	protocols
protocols.bynumber	protocols
publickey.byname	cred
rpc.bynumber	rpc
services.byname	services
ypservers		Not needed

NIS+ has one new table for which there is no corresponding NIS table: sendmailvars. The sendmailvars table stores the mail domain used by sendmail.