Setting up NIS questions?

[Chuck Swiger]

Steve Kargl wrote:
> I can't even get NIS set up with ypinit.  It unconditionally
> uses /bin/hostname, which will grab the FQDN of the system.
> You have given me an idea.  I can change rc.conf to set hostname
> to the name I've given 192.168.0.10, put that on bge0, put 
> the IP address associated with the FQDN on bge1, and reboot.
> This might permit NIS to come up.  Though this seems like a hack,
> because when someone connects to the seem via the FQDN, 
> /bin/hostname will give the wrong answer.

Associating the ypdomain with the FQDN from the DNS is convenient, and a 
convention that many follow, but it is not required, by any means.  The 
O'Reilly "Managing NIS and NFS" book is a fine reference on this sort of 
thing, BTW, and is probably available online in PDF form if you look.

Nevertheless, YP/NIS predates many of the more convoluted network 
designs that people set up nowadays, and was intended for machines which 
have a single identity even if they have multiple NICs-- Sun used to 
assign the same MAC address to all NICs on one machine, to ensure that 
people respected collision domains.  It is not normally desirable to set 
up a YP/NIS master server on a machine which is multihomed in the sense 
of doing NAT or needing a firewall to separate internal from external, 
and obvious a firewall machine running zero or the minimal necessary 
services is a lot more secure....

-- 
-Chuck