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Working With Oracle® Solaris 11.3 Directory and Naming Services: DNS and NIS

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Updated: October 2017
 
 

Updating and Modifying Existing Maps

After you have installed NIS, you might discover that some maps require frequent updating while others never need to change. For example, the passwd.byname map can change frequently on a large company's network, while the auto_master map changes little, if at all.

As mentioned in Default NIS Maps, the default location of the default NIS maps is on the master server in /var/yp/domainname, where domainname is the name of the NIS domain. When you need to update a map, you can use one of two updating procedures, depending on whether or not it is a default map.

  • A default map is a map in the default set that is created by the ypinit command from the network databases.

  • Non-default maps can be any of the following:

    • Maps that are included with an application purchased from a vendor

    • Maps that are created specifically for your site

    • Maps that are created from a non-text file

The following sections explain how to use various updating tools. In practice, you might decide to only use them if you add non-default maps or change the set of NIS servers after the system is already up and running.