2.3. NIS
Network Information Service (NIS) was one of Sun's earlier attempts at providing directory services to clients. This isn't to say that all features of NIS are still supported, but basic support is there. Because Mac OS X maintains support for NIS and has a directory services plug-in dedicated to it, you can use Directory Utility to configure Mac OS X as a NIS client. If you need NIS, you know what it is. If you don't, then you will likely want to forget you mentioned it. If you need to set it up though, let's take a look at how to do it.
To set up your NIS client, open Directory Utility and click on the lock to authenticate (so you can make changes). Then click on the Services icon in the Directory Utility toolbar and check the box for BSD Flat File and NIS (checked by default in 10.6), as shown in Figure 2-23.
Figure 2.23. Enabling NIS in Directory Utility
Next, double-click BSD Flat File and NIS row. At the resulting screen shown in Figure 2-24, check the box for Use User and Group records in BSD local node to activate the plug-in. Next, enter the domain name of your NIS environment in the Domain name: field and the IP address or hostname for your NIS servers in the Servers: field. Because of the differences between NIS and LDAPv3, you will need to check the Use NIS domain for authentication checkbox in order to populate the information for your NIS environment into the search policy of your node. When you are satisfied with your results, click on OK and then use dscl to test NIS functionality.
Figure 2.24. Adding an NIS Server Configuration
As you can imagine, there are commands you can use to manage NIS as well. These can be found in the /usr/sbin directory of your server and include the following:
ypbind: perform binding operations
ypxfr: obtains the map for a client from a directory server
yppoll: query data from a directory server's map
ypset: sets which directory server to use
ypwhich: show hostname of yp server
ypcat: show all of the available values in a NIS database
ypmatch: show the value of a specified key in the NIS database
NOTE
NIS was originally named Yellow Pages, which is why each command is prepended with the yp character set.
Mac OS X can act as a NIS server, although given the age you assume that you are either using NIS already or will not be implementing it. If you use NIS, you will want to manage the ypserv daemon, found in /usr/libexec. For more information on NIS, see the yp man page using the following command:
man yp