Basic Tasks On OpenSolaris 2008.05 For Many A Sun Employee

At Sun there are tools which we've distributed with Solaris internally through NIS auto mount maps and other things which all depended on NIS. Now with the new OpenSolaris installer a number of us are finding we've forgotten how to get NIS setup on a machine and have never setup Real Media RealPlayer, Adobe Flash, or even OpenOffice.

Setting up NIS

On OpenSolaris, since much of the independent developer community uses the domain name system (DNS) for host resolution, etc we have that as the default and didn't implement a pretty wrapper to setup a system for NIS as has been done in the past. However, the steps aren't too onerous.

Remove All the "Helpful" Bits

Disable Network Automagic (NWAM) if it doesn't get along with your system

Disabling NWAM

Run svcadm disable physical:nwam; svcadm enable physical:default

Setup /etc/hostname.<interface>

Put the hostname of your machine in a file called /etc/hostname.<interface> where interface is your ifconfig(1) interface name (i.e. bge0, yukonx0, etc.)

Setup /etc/defaultrouter

Put the router's IP address in /etc/defaultrouter

Setup your /etc/netmasks file if you have a non class-C network (non 255.255.255.0 netmask)

Put in an entry following the form <network> <netmask> (e.g. 172.16.24.0 255.255.252.0)

Configure NIS

Setup /etc/hosts

Enter your:

• NIS Server's IP Address and name(s)
• Your system's IP Address and nodename (if you also disabled NWAM)

Setup /detc/defaultdomain

Put your domain name in the file but remember it is case sensitive (i.e. clay.Boulder.Co.US)

Setup /etc/nsswitch.conf

Ensure the following lines have nis in them, so NIS is used to resolve (of course some of these are site specific too, so pick as appropriate):

• passwd
• group
• hosts
• ipnodes
• ethers
• netgroup
• automount
• printers
• auth_attr
• prof_attr

Change /etc/auto_master for the full IPS experience

To prevent mounting certain directories through a NIS auto.master map add the following to the end of /etc/auto_master (of course changing the mountpoint as appropriate):
/usr/local -null

Now turn on NIS

To enable and finish configuring NIS one should now only need to run ypinit -c and follow the prompts:

1. Enter the domain name (as entered in /etc/defaultdomain
2. Enter the NIS server´s name (as entered into /etc/hosts)

Ensure the NIS client service is enabled

To turn on NIS all one should need to do is run svcadm enable nis/client

Now to check everything

Everything should be setup and running now, but to make sure run svcs -x nis/client and if in the maintenance state there is a couple of possible reasons:

The log file says directory /var/yp/bindings/<domainname> not setup

Run mkdir /var/yp/bindings<domainname> and (for good measure) add /var/yp/binding/<domainname>/ypservers with the name of your NIS server (same as the entry in /etc/hosts in it

Things don't seem to resolve correctly

Run ypwhich(1) to see if you are binding to the correct server

Ensure /var/yp/aliases has your domain name and the keyword ypservers in it

The correct format for the aliases file is:
<domainname> <domainname>
ypservers ypservers

After trying any of these restart NIS with svcadm restart nis/client