This section describes naming changes that were introduced by the implementation of IPv6. You can store IPv6 addresses in any of the Oracle Solaris naming services, NIS, LDAP, DNS, and files. You can also use NIS over IPv6 RPC transports to retrieve any NIS data.
An IPv6-specific resource record, the AAAA resource record, has been specified by in RFC 1886 DNS Extensions to Support IP Version 6. This AAAA record maps a host name into a 128 bit IPv6 address. The PTR record is still used with IPv6 to map IP addresses into host names. The 32 four bit nibbles of the 128 bit address are reversed for an IPv6 address. Each nibble is converted to its corresponding hexadecimal ASCII value. Then, ip6.int is appended.
For Solaris 10 11/06 and previous releases, in addition to the capability of looking up IPv6 addresses through /etc/inet/ipnodes, IPv6 support has been added to the NIS, LDAP, and DNS name services. Consequently, the nsswitch.conf file has been modified to support IPv6 lookups.
hosts: files dns nisplus [NOTFOUND=return] ipnodes: files dns nisplus [NOTFOUND=return] |
Before changing the /etc/nsswitch.conf file to search ipnodes in multiple name services, populate these ipnodes databases with IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. Otherwise, unnecessary delays can result in the resolution of host addresses, including possible boot-timing delays.
The following diagram shows the new relationship between the nsswitch.conf file and the new name services databases for applications that use the gethostbyname and getipnodebyname commands. Items in italics are new. The gethostbyname command checks only for IPv4 addresses that are stored in /etc/inet/hosts. In Solaris 10 11/06 and previous releases, the getipnodebyname command consults the database that is specified in the ipnodes entry in the nsswitch.conf file. If the lookup fails, then the command checks the database that is specified in the hosts entry in the nsswitch.conf file.
For more information on name services, see System Administration Guide: Naming and Directory Services (DNS, NIS, and LDAP).
To support IPv6, you can look up IPv6 addresses with the existing name service commands. For example, the ypmatch command works with the new NIS maps. The nslookup command can look up the new AAAA records in DNS.