Preparing the Existing Namespace

If an NIS domain already exists at your site, you can use the same flat domain structure for your NIS+ namespace. (You can change it later to a hierarchical structure.) Read the NIS+ Transition Guide before you start your transition from NIS to NIS+ for important planning and preparation information. The NIS+ scripts enable you to start NIS+ with data from NIS maps. Chapter 4, Configuring NIS+ With Scripts shows you how to use the NIS+ scripts to create a NIS+ namespace from either system files or NIS maps.

In order for the scripts to run smoothly, however, you must prepare your existing namespace (if you have one) for conversion to NIS+. These preparations are described fully in NIS+ Transition Guide.

For your reference, key preparations are summarized below:

• Domain and host names. Domains and hosts must not have the same name. For example, if you have a sales domain you cannot have a machine named sales. Similarly, if you have a machine named home, do not create a domain named home. This caution also applies to subdomains; for example, if you have a machine named west, you don't want to create a sales.west.myco.com subdirectory.

• No dots in host names. Because NIS+ uses dots (periods) to delimit between machine names and domains and between parent and subdomains, you cannot have a machine name containing a dot. Before converting to NIS+ (before running the scripts) you must eliminate any dots in your host names. You should convert host name dots to hyphens. For example, you cannot have a machine named sales.alpha. You can convert that name to sales-alpha.

• Root server must be running. The machine that is designated to be the root server must be up and running and you must have superuser access to it.

• View any existing local /etc files or NIS maps that you will load data from. Make sure that there are no spurious or incorrect entries. Make sure that the right data is in the correct place and format. Remove any outdated, invalid, or corrupt entries. You should also remove any incomplete or partial entries. You can always add individual entries after configuration is completed. That is easier than trying to load incomplete or damaged entries.

In Solaris 2.4 and earlier, the /var/nis directory contained two files named hostname.dict and hostname.log. It also contained a subdirectory named /var/nis/hostname. When you install NIS+ for Solaris 2.5, the two files are named trans.log and data.dict, and the subdirectory is named /var/nis/data. In Solaris 2.5, the content of the files has also been changed and they are not backward compatible with Solaris 2.4 or earlier. Thus, if you rename either the directories or the files to match the Solaris 2.4 patterns, the files will not work with either the Solaris 2.4 or the Solaris 2.5 version of rpc.nisd. Therefore, you should rename neither the directories nor the files.