Prerequisites to Running nisrestore

In order to use nisrestore the target machine that will be receiving the NIS+ data from nisrestore must have already been set up as an NIS+ server. For a detailed description of setting up NIS+ servers, see Chapter 4, Configuring NIS+ With Scripts.

The prerequisites to using nisrestore are:

• The machine must have already been initialized as an NIS+ client.

• If the machine will be running in NIS-compatibility mode and support DNS forwarding, it must have a properly configured /etc/resolv.conf file.

• If you are using nisrestore on a server while other servers in the namespace are up and running, nisrestore will verify with those other servers that this server is configured to serve the backed up NIS+ objects that you are restoring to it. If no other servers are up and running in your namespace, then you must run nisrestore with the -f option. In other words, if there are other servers that nisrestore can check with, you do not need to use the -f option. If no other servers are available, for example if you are restoring a single master server and there are no functioning replica servers, then you must use the -f option.

In addition to the preceding three prerequisites, the rpc.nisd daemon must not be running on the machine. If necessary, you must kill rpc.nisd, by stopping the NIS+ service, before running nisrestore.