what is nsswitch.conf

ikinnu · 09-12-2007, 03:24 AM

Hi,

Is nsswitch.conf file's sole purpose is to give the NIS client about what services are to be used in which priority or is there any other use of the file?

Thanks.

acid_kewpie · 09-12-2007, 03:41 AM

nsswistch is only fleetingly related to NIS, it has much mroe important things to do, i.e. define where the system goes for information such as user bases, hostnames and all other things. this information can often live in NIS, but also in dns servers, local files, ldap servers etc... so it defines which types are tried in what order.

ikinnu · 09-12-2007, 04:42 AM

Hi,

Is nsswitch.conf file used by NIS server to know for which files it needs to create NIS maps?

acid_kewpie · 09-12-2007, 07:08 AM

it is not, to my knowledge, used *by* servers. it's just a low level routing tool for system information. a nigher up service just demands information from the operating system and the system does what nsswitch defines as what it can do to compelte the request.

ikinnu · 09-13-2007, 01:04 AM

Hi,

Then what is the file that is referred to by the NIS server to build the maps from ASCII files? Is there any file for that purpose? I mean the NIS server should have some information about what files to be included to build the NIS maps. And can you also please outline clearly what are the daemons that are to be started on the server side and as well as the client side in NIS bcoz different tutorials give different information regarding these.

Thanks.