Re: Setting up NIS

[Ian Greenhoe <igreenhoe@real.com>]

On Wed, May 30, 2001 at 05:31:22PM -0500, Dave Sherohman wrote:
> I'm trying to get a NIS domain started and having little luck...  I've
> followed along through /usr/share/doc/nis/nis.debian.howto.gz (which is
> great to have there!), but it doesn't seem to have worked.
> 
> I started to suspect that things weren't working at step 3.6, starting the
> server, when it didn't seem to be able to bind to the YP server.  (I'm still
> not entirely clear on why it wants to bind to the server when /etc/init.d/nis
> is telling it that it's the master server, but I digress...)

1)  So that you can verify that it is working, w/o having a bunch of other
    possible problems preventing verification.

2)  So that you can use NIS locally with the same client code.
    [same client code == less code == less bugs]

> Then, in step 3.7, I knew things weren't working as I saw
> "/usr/lib/yp/ypinit -m" report "failed to send 'clear' to local ypserv:
> RPC: Timed out" for each and every map that it tried to update.

Until and unless you can get it to bind to the server, doing anything
else is useless.

> Just to be sure, though, I tried a ypwhich after ypinit finished and was
> told, "can't yp_bind: Reason: Domain not bound".

This says that ypbind is not talking to the server.

> Throughout all of this, nothing was logged to syslog.

Not necessarily suprising.  I've found the most useful way to get data
from ypserv is to run it from a seperate [aEwx]term with the -d
switch.  Word of warning:  It can produce a *lot* of data.

> So how do I troubleshoot this?  Is the problem obvious to anyone?

1)  Don't try anything else until ypbind/ypwhich works.

2)  There are a number of potential problems:

*  NIS was broken in testing due to recent glibc upgrade.
   [upgrade nis if you are using testing/unstable]

*  make sure that /etc/ypserv.conf is set up appropriately.  You might
   wish to add the following temporarily [for testing only, since it
   opens NIS up to anybody who can access your machine.  Better make
   sure that your passwords are good!]

   * : * : none

*  add a "ypserver" line to /etc/yp.conf if it doesn't exist.

*  make sure that NISSERVER=master in /etc/init.d/nis

*  make sure that nis was started *after* portmapper.  In fact, you may want
   to do the following:

   1) make sure that portmap is running.
      ("/etc/init.d/portmap start" sans quotes otherwise*)

   2) restart nis.
      /etc/init.d/nis start

   3) check that nis is registered with portmapper
        (you'll see ypbind/ypserv, not nis, listed)
      pmap_dump
        or
      rpcinfo -p

   * -- BTW, *stopping* portmap can have bad effects.  For example,
        NFS requires portmap.

HTH,
-Ian