NIS services

NIS (Network Information Service) as a directory and naming service is a basic, minimally and centralized tool for small to medium network administration. Apart from this, I'd say the major problem with NIS is that it is insecure as its communication can be intercepted, disclosed, tempered and faked. The security problems are very unfortunate as otherwise the service provided by NIS is of vital importance to network administration. NIS was certainly developed (on the glory of the 80's) without any security aspects in mind, but that's somewhat justifiable as, with all due respect, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.".

Nowadays it's only reasonable to have NIS where security isn't of concern although I have difficulty in assessing if such a scenario still exists. Due to the present time dynamics, sooner or later some security issue will kick in but NIS won't be of any help at all, on the contrary it may even undermine auditing as NIS grounds are totally unreliable, even if auditing claims something.

Nevertheless, it's a kind of obligation to cover the steps on installing and configuring NIS in order to pursuit what's beyond it. So, I'll visit the known procedures, and most importantly, tricks, on how to properly configure a:

• NIS master server
• NIS slave server
• NIS client
   

But beyond installation and configuration I also plan having a look at:
 

• Maps
• Custom maps
• Automounter integration

For further detail I'd point to:

• Setting Up and Configuring NIS (Tasks) - Solaris 11
• Setting Up and Configuring NIS Service - Solaris 10
• Automounter & NIS - O'Reilly
• Masters, slaves, clients - O'Reilly

NOTE

Once NIS services are in place a proper intialization (boot) sequence is required and in the following order:

1. NIS master
2. NIS slaves
3. NFS servers
4. NIS clients