FNS and NIS Naming

NIS is an enterprise-wide information service in the Solaris environment. Local files can be used along with NIS. Under NIS, an enterprise is organized as a single NIS domain.

Each enterprise is a single NIS domain. There is one FNS organizational unit which corresponds to the single NIS domain.

FNS federates NIS and local files to support naming policies in the Solaris environment. To do this, FNS provides the XFN interface for performing naming operations on organization, site, user, and host maps. It implements these operations using the appropriate programming interface for accessing files, directories.

Under NIS, FNS context and attribute data are stored in NIS maps. These maps are stored in a /var/yp/domainname directory on a NIS server. Under NIS, the super user can use FNS commands to work with the information in FNS maps.

NIS Clients Can Update Contexts With FNS if SKI is Running

If certain conditions are met, any NIS client (machine, process, or user) can use FNS commands such as fncreate_fs or fncreate_printer to update the client's own contexts. This allows NIS clients to use FNS commands to update applications such as Printer Administrator, CDE Calendar Manager, Admin Tool and others.

For non-super-users to update their own contexts with FNS commands, the following conditions must be met:

• Secure Key_management Infrastructure (SKI) must be available on the NIS master server.

• The fnsypd daemon must be running on the NIS master server. This daemon must be started by someone with super user privileges.

• A client user or machine is only allowed to update its own context.

• The client must be authorized to perform the requested update.