[BBLISA] Help setting up NIS (or alternative to NIS.)

[Kevin Ruderman]

You can also run 'makedbm -u dbm-filename' to extract all the key/data pairs.

Using ypcat, as mentioned previously, is cleaner but this method has the
advantage of working even if the server(s) are down. Note that you do get
"key (space) data" pairs AND the two special key entries YP_LAST_MODIFIED and
YP_MASTER_NAME this way too.

You can also run this to recover data from a DBM map on the master server
after a crash, when you find your source file got trashed, and you know you
have a bunch of updates in there past even the most recent backup that is
only a few hours old (now how would I know that...).

Kevin
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Information Technology    Boston University    rudi at bu.edu


On Tue, 20 Sep 2005, Eddy Harvey wrote:

> Hey all y'all.
>
> I know how to configure a nis master and a nis slave, so if the master
> goes down, the slave will take over the traffic.  But I'm afraid of what
> happens if the master catches fire.  Because the slave only answers
> queries, it doesn't keep a copy of its own files, I have no way to pick
> up the pieces and move on, if the master suffers a catastrophic failure.
>
> For example, suppose the master loses its hard drive completely.  And
> the slave starts taking all the traffic.  And then I decide to add a new
> user.  Well, I no longer have the /etc/passwd file that the master was
> serving, and all those other files.  So how, then, could I run make from
> /var/yp?  It seems to me that I'd be up the creek.
>
> Anybody have any good suggestions to help me with my reliability fears?
>
> Thanks in advance....
>