ypinit(1Mnis)

ypinit -- build and install NIS database

Synopsis

/usr/sbin/ypinit -c

/usr/sbin/ypinit -m

/usr/sbin/ypinit -s master-name

/usr/sbin/ypinit -r

Description

The ypinit command sets up the Network Information Service (NIS) on a server or a client. It can also be used to remove NIS configuration from a system.

Files

/var/yp/binding/domainname/ypservers
/var/yp/YPMAPS
/etc/init.d/nis
/etc/inet/nis.conf

Usage

ypinit can be used to set up an NIS master server, an NIS slave server, or an NIS client. To run ypinit, you must be the NIS administrator root with the appropriate privileges. It asks a few self-explanatory questions, and reports success or failure to the terminal.

ypinit sets up a master server using the simple model in which that server is master to all maps in the data base. This is the way to bootstrap the NIS system; later if you want you can change the association of maps to masters.

All databases are built from scratch, either from information available to the program at runtime, or from the ASCII data base files in /etc. These files should be in their ``traditional'' form, rather than the abbreviated form used on client machines.

An NIS database on a slave server is set up by copying an existing database from a running server. The master-name argument should be the hostname of a NIS server (either the master server for all the maps, or a server on which the data base is up-to-date and stable).

NOTE: If you want to modify the list of maps that a slave slaver will initially request from the master server, edit the file /var/yp/YPMAPS on the slave server before running ypinit.

To set up a client, ypinit prompts for a list of NIS servers to bind the client to, this list should be ordered from closest to farthest server.

Refer to ypfiles(4nis) and ypserv(1Mnis) for an overview of the NIS service.

Options

ypinit takes the following options:

-c: Set up a client system.
-m: Indicate that the local host is to be the NIS master.
-r: Remove NIS configuration from a system. This stops the NIS daemons, deletes /etc/inet/nis.conf, unsets the NIS domain name, removes any tcpip_nis.so entries from /etc/netconfig, and deletes the symbolic links /usr/lib/ns.so and /usr/lib/ns.so.1. It does not undo any changes that the administrator has made to files such as /etc/passwd or /etc/group.
-s master-name: Set up a slave database.

References

makedbm(1Mnis), nis.conf(4nis), ypbuild(1Mnis), yppush(1Mnis), ypserv(1Mnis), ypxfr(1Mnis), ypfiles(4nis)