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fns_nis(5)

NAME

fns_nis- overview of FNS over NIS (YP) implementation

DESCRIPTION

Federated Naming Service (FNS) provides a method for federating multiple naming services under a single, simple interface for the basic naming operations. One of the naming services supported by FNS is NIS (YP), the enterprise-wide information services in Solaris (see ypcat(1), ypmatch(1), ypfiles(4)). FNS provides the XFN interface for performing naming and attribute operations on FNS enterprise objects (organization, site, user, host and service objects) using NIS. FNS stores bindings for these objects in NIS and uses them in conjunction with existing NIS objects.

FNS Policies and NIS

FNS defines policies for naming objects in the federated namespace (see fns_policies(5)). At the enterprise level, FNS policies specify naming for organizations, hosts, users, sites, and services. The enterprise-level naming service provides contexts to allow other objects to be named relative to these objects.

The FNS organizational unit namespace provides a hierarchical namespace for naming subunits of an enterprise. However, NIS does not support a hierarchical organizational structure. Therefore, a NIS domain maps to a single organizational unit in the FNS namespace.

Users in an FNS organizational unit correspond to the users in the passwd.byname map of the corresponding NIS domain. FNS provides a context for each user in the passwd.byname map.

Hosts in an FNS organizational unit correspond to the hosts in the hosts.byname map of the corresponding NIS domain. FNS provides a context for each host in the hosts.byname map.

Federating NIS with DNS or X.500

Federating NIS with the global naming systems DNS or X.500 makes NIS contexts accessible outside of an NIS domain. To enable the federation, the administrator must first add address information in either DNS or X.500 (see fns_dns(5) and fns_x500(5)). After this administrative step has been taken, clients outside of the NIS domain can access contexts and perform operations.

Security Considerations

Changes to the FNS information (using the commands fncreate(1M), fncreate_fs(1M), fncreate_printer(1M), fnbind(1), fndestroy(1M), fncheck(1M), and fnunbind(1)) can be performed only by the privileged users on the NIS master server that maintains the FNS information.

For example, the command fncreate(1M) creates the NIS map for the associated NIS domain in the system on which it is executed. Hence, the command must be run by a privileged user either on the NIS master server or on a system that will serve as a NIS master server for FNS.

The NIS object name that corresponds to an FNS composite name can be obtained using fnlookup(1) and fnlist(1).