Creating a Directory

To create a directory, you must have create rights to its parent directory on the domain master server. First use the -m option to identify the master server and then the -s option to identify the replica, use:

nismkdir -m master directory
nismkdir -s replica directory

Always run nismkdir on the master server. Never run nismkdir on the replica machine. Running nismkdir on a replica creates communications problems between the master and the replica.

This example creates the sales.doc.com. directory and specifies its master server, smaster.doc.com. and its replica, rep1.doc.com.. It is entered from the root master server.

rootmaster% nismkdir -m smaster.doc.com. sales.doc.com.
rootmaster% nismkdir -m smaster.doc.com. org_dir.sales.doc.com.
rootmaster% nismkdir -m smaster.doc.com. groups_dir.sales.doc.com.
rootmaster% nismkdir -s rep1.doc.com. sales.doc.com.
rootmaster% nismkdir -s rep1.doc.com. org_dir.sales.doc.com.
rootmaster% nismkdir -s rep1.doc.com. groups_dir.sales.doc.com.

The nismkdir command allows you to use the parent directory's servers for the new directory instead of specifying its own. However, this should not be done except in the case of small networks. Here are two examples:

• The first example creates the sales.doc.com. directory and associates it with its parent directory's master and replica servers.

  rootmaster% nismkdir sales.doc.com

The second example creates the sales.doc.com. directory and specifies its own master server, smaster.doc.com.

rootmaster% nismkdir -m smaster.doc.com. sales.doc.com.

Since no replica server is specified, the new directory will have only a master server until you use nismkdir again to assign it a replica. If the sales.doc.com. domain already existed, the nismkdir command as shown above would have made salesmaster.doc.com. its new master server and would have relegated its old master server to a replica.