[NTLUG:Discuss] Distributing users via NIS

[Chris Cox]

Minh Duong wrote:
> I have set up a NIS master and a NIS slave but can't
> seem to get new user that were created on the master
> to distribute to the slave.  I create the new user on
> the master server and then push it to slave.  I can
> ypcat to see the new users on both the master and
> slave but when I try to login as the user on the
> slave, it says that no user exists.  Am I missing
> something simple? Thanks in advance.
> 

Something simple... what is in your ypservers?  From the
master do a ypcat -k ypservers.  Make sure that the master
knows how to resolve the name(s) presented there (e.g.
always a good idea to have the slave servers in /etc/hosts
unless you push a host map via NIS, but I think host maps
in NIS are a BAD idea and prefer DNS, but don't make NIS
dependent on DNS... so /etc/hosts instead).

Does the slave server join the NIS domain successfully?
Do a ypwhich on the slave... probably will bind to
itself if it is a NIS client.  Do a ypcat passwd.
If that works, then it's likely you just missed the ypservers
map.  On SUSE, the ypservers text file in in /var/yp.
You'll need to issue a make to generate the map after
editing the file.

See: http://www.ntlug.org/~ccox/ntlug_nis/index.htm
for info on doing ypxfr's of various maps as a cron
task on the slave (to catch instances where the slave
is down and misses updates from the master).

Hope this helps,
Chris