NIS - info and setup

NIS - Network Information Service, allow distribution of administrative databases (maps) among other servers (master, slaves and clients)

See table for better understanding:

NIS Elements

NIS domain - group of machines that share the maps
NIS daemons: makedbm, ypserv, ypbind, ypxfrd (high speed map transfer), rpc.yppasswd (passwd update daemon) and rpc.ypupdated (modify other maps)
NIS utilities: makedbm, ypcat, ypinit, ypmatch, yppoll, yppush, ypset, ypwhich, ypxfr (see man pages)
NIS maps - are kind of replacement for /etc files and are 2 column tables: key and information about key. Makefile is in /var/yp on master server, running make in that dir causes makedbm to modify maps from input files.
NIS binding modes - Server list (/var/yp/binding/domainname/ypservers file has list of NIS servers) or Broadcast.

Check on this also:

ypserv daemon is running only on the server (handle request from clients and send info to them)
ypbind daemon is running on all servers and clients (check ypservers file and initiate binding to fist server, or any other available)
ypinit create maps from input files
ypxfr pulls maps from remote server to local /var/yp/domain dir - you can run from crontab file
ypxfrd daemon runs only on master server and provides services for ypxfr
yppush copy new maps from master to slaves, run it on master
yppoll tells which version of NIS is running on server
ypcat example : ypcat group | grep vg-license
ypmatch example : ypmatch vg-license group

Planning NIS domain

Limit domain name to max 32 characters
For convenience, use your company name
Create file /etc/defaultdomain with NIS domain name, like yourcompany.ca
You can have only one master server, and many slave ones (you may want to have slaves in remote offices for example)

Preparing Master Server

Don't use /etc as source files directory, since this is for local files on master server, so use for example /var/yp/etc
So Makefile in /var/yp should have line DIR=/var/yp/etc
/etc/passwd and /etc/shadow format can be used to build NIS maps, but copy them to /var/yp/etc and remove root account
In Makefile setup PWDIR=/var/yp/etc
Copy all required source files to /var/yp/etc (files are auto.home, auto.master, bootparams, ethers, group, hosts, ipnodes, netgroup, netmasks, networks, passwd, protocol, rpc, service, shadow, user_attr - note that this may not be same for everyone, like you)
Convert these source files to ndbm format maps used by NIS. How? The ypinit calls make which uses Makefile in /var/yp and Makefile transform source files into ndbm format maps.
Check /etc/nsswitch.conf file that looks how you want to look
Fill /etc/hosts file with IP/names of all NIS servers
Build new maps on master with : /usr/sbin/ypinit -m
If some of map files are not present you can get nonfatal error, deal with it according the situation.
So ypinit will construct list of servers and run make which will call makedbm and create maps
You can also copy /etc/nsswitch.nis to /etc/nsswitch.conf (if this works for your setup)
There are three ways for start/stop NIS server:

Preparing Slave Server

Add other NIS servers to /etc/hosts file
First set it up as NIS client in order to get maps from master for the first time. Run : /usr/sbin/ypinit -c
You'll be prompted for list of NIS servers, enter name of local slave you are working on, then master, followed by other slaves.
Start client with "svcadm enable -r svc:/network/nis/client"
Make sure NIS is running, just restart with: ypstop ; ypstart
Initialize machine as slave "ypinit -s nis_master_server"

Preparing NIS client