Your network can have one or more slave servers. Having slave servers ensures the continuity of NIS services when the master server is not available.
Before actually running ypinit to create the slave servers, you should run the domainname command on each NIS slave to make sure the domain name is consistent with the master server.
Domain names are case-sensitive.
Make sure that the network is working properly before you configure an NIS slave server. In particular, check to be sure you can use rcp to send files from the master NIS server to NIS slaves.
The following procedure shows how to set up a slave server.
Become superuser.
Edit the /etc/hosts or /etc/inet/ipnodes file on the slave server to add the name and IP addresses of all the other NIS servers.
Change directory to /var/yp on the slave server.
You must first configure the new slave server as an NIS client so that it can get the NIS maps from the master for the first time. See Setting Up NIS Clients for details.
To initialize the slave server as a client, type the following.
# /usr/sbin/ypinit -c
The ypinit command prompts you for a list of NIS servers. Enter the name of the local slave you are working on first, then the master server, followed by the other NIS slave servers in your domain in order from the physically closest to the furthest in network terms.
To determine if ypbind is running, type the following.
# ps -ef | grep ypbind
If a listing is displayed, ypbind is running.
If ypbind is running, stop it.
# /usr/lib/netsvc/yp/ypstop
Type the following to restart ypbind.
# /usr/lib/netsvc/yp/ypstart
To initialize this machine as a slave, type the following.
# /usr/sbin/ypinit -s master
Where master is the machine name of the existing NIS master server.
Repeat the procedures described in this section for each machine you want configured as an NIS slave server.
The following procedure shows how to start NIS on a slave server.