To federate an enterprise naming service under DNS or X.500/LDAP, information must be added to these respective naming systems to enable access to and from the enterprise and the global Internet outside of the enterprise. This information is the root reference, which consists of network address information describing how to reach the top of a particular enterprise namespace.
The root reference consists of a single address which contains a single, XDR-encoded string. The address type and content varies according to the enterprise level name service you are using: NIS+ or NIS.
When your enterprise level name service is NIS+, the root reference address type is: onc_fn_nisplus_root. There are two required, and one optional, elements in a root reference network address. The elements are separated by white spaces:
root-domain server [server_IP_address] |
Address Element |
Description |
---|---|
root_domain |
The fully qualified name of the NIS+ root domain (trailing dot required). |
server |
The host name of one of the NIS+ servers (master or replica) serving nis+_root_domain. |
server_IP_address |
The IP address of nis+server. This is optional if the address of nis+server is expected to be known. This means it should be available through one of the name services listed in the /etc/nsswitch.conf file. |
For example, suppose that the NIS+ root domain is doc.com. (notice the trailing dot), and that it can be reached using the host nismaster.doc.com. The root reference would be:
doc.com. nismaster.doc.com |
The IP address of the server is not given in the example above because it is expected to be available through other means. If for some reason that IP address was not available through other means, the root reference would look like:
doc.com. nismaster.doc.com 123.123.123.33 |
When your enterprise level name service is NIS, the root reference address type is: onc_fn_nis_root. There are two required, and one optional, elements in a root reference network address. The elements are separated by white spaces:
root_domain server [server_IP_address] |
Address Element |
Description |
---|---|
root_domain |
The fully qualified name of the NIS domain (trailing slash required). |
server |
The host name of one of the NIS servers (master or slave) serving root_domain. |
server_IP_address |
The IP address of nis-server. This is optional if the address of nis-server is expected to be known. This means it should be available through one of the name services listed in the /etc/nsswitch.conf file. |
For example, suppose that the NIS domain is doc.com, and that it can be reached using the host ypmaster.doc.com. The root reference would be:
doc.com/ ypmaster.doc.com |
The IP address of the server is not given in the example above because it is expected to be available through other means. If for some reason that IP address was not available through other means, the root reference would look like:
doc.com/ ypmaster.doc.com 123.123.123.37 |