NIS+ and the Service Management Facility

Most of the command line administrative tasks associated with the NIS+ service are managed by the Service Management Facility (SMF). For an overview of SMF, refer to Chapter 18, Managing Services (Overview), in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration. Also refer to the svcadm(1M) and svcs(1) man pages for more details.

• Administrative actions on the NIS+ service, such as enabling, disabling, or restarting, can be performed using the svcadm command. When the service is started or stopped, any dependent processes are also started or stopped.

  ---

  Tip –

  Temporarily disabling a service by using the -t option provides some protection for the service configuration. If the service is disabled with the -t option, the original settings would be restored for the service after a reboot. If the service is disabled without -t, the service will remain disabled after reboot.

  ---

• SMF automatically starts nis_cachemgr when it enables the NIS+ service, if it detects the /var/nis/NIS_COLD_START file.

• The NIS+ Fault Managed Resource Identifier (FMRI) is svc:/network/rpc/nisplus:<instance>.

• The FMRI for keyserv is svc:/network/rpc/keyserv:<instance>.

• You can query the status of NIS+ by using the svcs command.

  • Example of svcs command and output.

    # svcs \*nisplus\* STATE STIME FMRI disabled Sep_01 svc:/network/rpc/nisplus:default

  • Example of svcs -l command and output.

    # svcs -l network/rpc/nisplus fmri svc:/network/rpc/nisplus:default enabled false state disabled next_state none restarter svc:/system/svc/restarter:default dependency require_all/none svc:/network/rpc/keyserv (online)

    You can also use the svccfg utility to get more detailed information about a service. See the svccfg(1M) man page.

• You can check a daemon's presence by using the ps command.

  # ps -e | grep rpc.nisd

  ---

  Note –

  Do not use the -f option with ps because this option attempts to translate user IDs to names, which causes more naming service lookups that might not succeed.

  ---

Using svcadm With rpc.nisd -x

In general, the /usr/sbin/rpc.nisd daemon is administered using the svcadm command. However, when rpc.nisd is invoked with -x nisplusLDAPinitialUpdateOnly=yes, rpc.nisd performs the specified action, then exits. That is, rpc.nisd does not daemonize. SMF should not be used in conjunction with -x nisplusLDAPinitialUpdateOnly=yes. SMF can be used any other time you want to start, stop, or restart the rpc.nisd daemon.

The following example shows rpc.nisd used with -x nisplusLDAPinitialUpdateOnly=yes.

# /usr/sbin/rpc.nisd -m mappingfile \
-x nisplusLDAPinitialUpdateAction=from_ldap \
-x nisplusLDAPinitialUpdateOnly=yes

Modifying the /lib/svc/method/nisplus File

If you want to include specific options when you invoke the rpc.nisd daemon with SMF, add the options to the /lib/svc/method/nisplus file. The following list provides some commonly used options.

-S 0

Sets the server's security level to 0, which is required at this point for bootstrapping.

Because no cred table exists yet, no NIS+ principals can have credentials. If you use a higher security level, you are locked out of the server.

-B

Supports DNS forwarding

-Y

Starts the NIS+ daemon in NIS-compatibility mode

How to Modify the /lib/svc/method/nisplus File

1. Become superuser or assume an equivalent role.

   Roles contain authorizations and privileged commands. For more information about roles, see Chapter 9, Using Role-Based Access Control (Tasks), in System Administration Guide: Security Services.

2. Stop the NIS+ service.

   # svcadm disable network/rpc/nisplus:default

3. Open the /lib/svc/method/nisplus file.

   Use your preferred text editor.

4. Edit the file to add the desired options.

   Example –

   Change:

   /usr/sbin/rpc.nisd $nisd_flags || exit $?

   To:

   /usr/sbin/rpc.nisd $nisd_flags -Y -B || exit $?

   In this example, the -Y and -B options are added to rpc.nisd, so the options are automatically implemented at startup.

5. Save and quit.

6. Start the NIS+ service.

   # svcadm enable network/rpc/nisplus:default