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2. Glossary and General Information2.1. Glossary of Terms
In this document a lot of acronyms are used. Here are the most
important acronyms and a brief explanation: - DBM
DataBase Management, a library of functions which
maintain key-content pairs in a data base. - DLL
Dynamically Linked Library, a library linked to an
executable program at run-time. - domainname
A name "key" that is used by NIS clients to be
able to locate a suitable NIS server that serves that
domainname key. Please note that this does not necessarily
have anything at all to do with the DNS "domain"
(machine name) of the machine(s). - FTP
File Transfer Protocol, a protocol used to transfer
files between two computers. - libnsl
Name services library, a library of name service calls
(getpwnam, getservbyname, etc...) on SVR4 Unixes. GNU libc
uses this for the NIS (YP) and NIS+ functions. - libsocket
Socket services library, a library for the socket
service calls (socket, bind, listen, etc...) on SVR4 Unixes. - NIS
Network Information Service, a service that provides
information, that has to be known throughout the network,
to all machines on the network. There is support for NIS
in Linux's standard libc library, which in the following text
is referred to as "traditional NIS". - NIS+
Network Information Service (Plus :-), essentially NIS on
steroids. NIS+ is designed by Sun Microsystems Inc. as a
replacement for NIS with better security and better handling
of _large_ installations. - NYS
This is the name of a project and stands for NIS+, YP and Switch
and is managed by Peter Eriksson <peter@ifm.liu.se>. It contains
among other things a complete reimplementation of the NIS (= YP) code
that uses the Name Services Switch functionality of the NYS library. - NSS
Name Service Switch. The /etc/nsswitch.conf file determines the order
of lookups performed when a certain piece of information is requested. - RPC
Remote Procedure Call. RPC routines allow C programs to
make procedure calls on other machines across the network.
When people talk about RPC they most often mean the Sun RPC
variant. - YP
Yellow Pages(tm), a registered trademark in the UK of
British Telecom plc. - TCP-IP
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. It is the
data communication protocol most often used on Unix machines.
2.2. Some General Information
The next four lines are quoted from the Sun(tm) System & Network
Administration Manual:
"NIS was formerly known as Sun Yellow Pages (YP) but
the name Yellow Pages(tm) is a registered trademark
in the United Kingdom of British Telecom plc and may
not be used without permission." |
NIS stands for Network Information Service. Its purpose is to
provide information, that has to be known throughout the network,
to all machines on the network. Information likely to be
distributed by NIS is:
If, for example, your password entry is recorded in the NIS
passwd database, you will be able to login on all machines on the
network which have the NIS client programs running. Sun is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. licensed to
SunSoft, Inc.
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