Network Information Service

Network Information Service ( NIS ) also named Yellow Pages is a protocol Client waiter developed by Sun allowing the centralization of information on a network UNIX.

Presentation

Its goal is to distribute the contained informations in files of configuration containing for example the host names ( /etc/ Hosts ), the accounts users ( /etc/passwd ), etc on a network.

A waiter NIS stores and distributes thus administrative information of the network, which behaves thus like a coherent whole of accounts users, groups, machines, etc

At the origin, NIS left under the name of “Yellow Pages” (YP) or Yellow pages but the name being deposited by the English company British Telecom, Sun has famous its protocol NIS . However, orders NIS begin all with YP .

NIS is famous to be weak in terms of safety.

Composition and operation

NIS comprises a waiter, a library of access customer and orders of administration. The waiter NIS generates charts (also called maps) stored in base files of data (in general DBM or GDB) starting from the files of configuration. The customer recovers information by questioning the waiter starting from calls RPC.

Orders

Some basic commands of with dimensions of the stations customers:

yppasswd
ypcat
ypmatch
ypwhich
ypclnt

Dependant projects

NIS+: evolution of NIS protected and adapted better to the large networks, developed by Sun
NYS

Concurrent solutions

Today, NIS is increasingly abandoned with the profit of the protocols LDAP, Kerberos, RADII or others, protected and compatible with heterogeneous networks.

External bonds

System Administration Guides: Naming and Directory Services (DNS, NIS, and LDAP), extracted from Solaris 10 System Administrator Collection of Sun microsystems.

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