NAME

nisfiles − NIS+ database files and directory structure

SYNOPSIS

/var/nis

DESCRIPTION

The Network Information Service Plus (NIS+) uses a memory based, replicated database.  This database uses a set of files in the /var/nis directory for checkpointing to stable storage and for maintaining a transaction log.  Additionally, the NIS+ server and client use files in this directory to store binding and state information. 

The NIS+ service implements an authentication and authorization system that is built upon Secure RPC.  In this implementation, the service uses a table named cred.org_dir.domain-name to store the public and private keys of principals that are authorized to access the NIS+ namespace.  It stores group access information in the subdomain groups_dir.domain-name as group objects.  These two tables appear as files in the /var/nis/hostname directory on the NIS+ server. 

Unlike the previous versions of the network information service the In NIS+, the information in the tables is initially loaded into the service from the ASCII files on the server and then updated using NIS+ utilities (nistbladm −D).  Some sites may wish to periodically regenerate the ASCII files for archival purposes.  To do this, a script chould be added in the crontab of the server that lists these tables and creates the ASCII file from the result. 

Note: Except for the NIS_COLDSTART and NIS_SHARED_DIRCACHE file, no other files should be manipulated by commands such as cp(1), mv(1) or rm(1).  The transaction log file keeps logs of all changes made, and hence the files cannot be manipulated independently. 

The files described below are stored in the /var/nis directory:

NIS_COLDSTART
This file contains NIS+ directory objects that are to be preloaded into the NIS+ cache at startup time.  This file is usually created at NIS+ installation time.  See nisinit(1M). 

NIS_SHARED_DIRCACHE
This file contains the current cache of NIS+ bindings being maintained by the cache manager.  The contents can be viewed with nisshowcache(1M). 

hostname.log
This file contains a transaction log that is maintained by the NIS+ service.  It can be viewed using the nislog(1M) command.  This file contains holes.  Its apparent size may be a lot higher than its actual size.  there is only one transaction log per server. 

hostname.dict
This file is a dictionary that is used by the NIS+ database to locate its files.  It is created by the default NIS+ database package.  There is no log file for the dictionary. 

hostname This directory contains databases that the server uses. 

hostname/root.object
On root servers, this file contains a directory object that describes the root of the name space.

hostname/parent.object
On root servers this file contains a directory object that describes the parent namespace. This file is created by the nisinit(1M) command.  If this is an isolated namespace, this file is not created. 

hostname/table_name
For each table in the directory there will be a file with the same name that stores the information about that table. If there are subdirectories within this directory, the database for the table is stored in the file table_name.subdirectory. 

hostname/table_name.log
This file contains the database log for the table table_name. The log file maintains the state of individual transactions to each database. When a database has been checkpointed (that is, all changes have been made to the hostname/table_name stable storage), this log file will have zero length. 

Currently, NIS+ does not automatically do checkpointing.  The system administrator may want to do nisping −C (see nisping(1M) man page) operations periodically (such as, once a day) to checkpoint the log file.  This can be done either through a cron(1M) job, or manually. 

hostname/root_dir
On root servers, this file stores the database associated with the root directory. It is similar to other table databases. The corresponding log file is called root_dir.log. 

hostname/cred.org_dir
This table contains the credentials of principals in this NIS+ domain. 

hostname/groups_dir
This table contains the group authorization objects needed by NIS+ to authorize group access. 

SEE ALSO

nis(1), niscat(1), nismatch(1), nistbladm(1), nisinit(1M), nislog(1M), nis_db(3N), nis_objects(3N)

Sun Microsystems  —  Last change: 15 Jul 1993