On Friday 30 January 2004 21:16 pm, Steven T. Hatton wrote:
On Friday 30 January 2004 15:44, Dylan wrote:
On Friday 30 January 2004 20:03 pm, Steven T. Hatton wrote:
[snip]
It doesn't. but works well with it. It may be a dependency, but automount (actually autofs) is independent of NIS.
All I know is that when I had NIS installed and configured, I could cd /net/<hostname?>/directory/path, but that stopped working when I blew away the NIS configuration.
OK, that suggests you were distributing the autofs maps with NIS. What does the 'automount' line in /etc/nsswitch.conf say?
If you are thinking of using it then I'd reccomend getting the latest autofs4 from www.kernel.org.
There was a time I always built my own kernel, but it started requiring thought, and that was more than I could handle. I hope that is bundled in the eagerly awaited 2.6.x kernel rpms from SuSE. My last try resulted in no network connection, so I rolled back.
There is no need to rebuild the kernel to use the latest autofs4 - you just need to install the kernel source, make cloneconfig, make dep, then compile the new module and copy over the old one. You also need to compile the support apps. There is no SuSE init.d script for it, but the one from the SuSE supplied package works just fine.
[snip]
NIS+ is only available as a client - SFAIK there is no Linux server for it, only a Solaris one. Can't say any more about it that that...
I /believe/ yp is actually NIS+.
NIS works well, but you may need to hack the makefile to get it to distribute non-standard autofs maps. I simply added the necessary sections for my setup and it worked fine. There is no encryption on the passwords, so it shouldn't be used on an open or untrusted network.
I recall looking at something in the SuSE distribution, late one night, over a year ago that purported to be a means of using PKI (Primary Key Infrastructure) and/or encryption with NIS/YP and/or NFS. All I recall clearly is the package had the fingerprints of one of the SuSE old-timers all over it, and it consisted of little more than C header files.
Autofs3 doesn't (IME, YMMV) work well, especially with NIS. autofs4 (and I really do suggest getting the latest build) functions as described - I share all the autofs configs with NIS over 8 boxes without problems -
I don't believe I have had Autofs4 working, but as I say, it's been over a year since I dug into this.
NFS has some peculiarities - it doesn't co-exist well with reiserfs, no matter what people say about the problems being fixed. Security is basic to say the least, but if you configure it sensibly you should be safe on a closed network. It's not easy to get it running through NAT, to the extent that I wouldn't bother trying (again, YMMV.) Also, it's picky about whitespace in the /etc/exports file, and the file locking is not what it should be!
I do recall reading so sun documentation on NIS+/NFS and encryption, but that was back in the 20th century.
HTH
It forces me to think... Oh wait, I said I didn't want to do that. ;-) Actually, I'm taking a breather from learning to use SOAP and AXIS*, and looking at the SuSE 9.0 book's networking sections.
BTW, if any of the Novell folks out there in Happy Valley are listening, there are three requirements for any kind of network solution that involves first level administrators or users directly. User interface, user interface and user interface.
Dylan
STH
-- "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin