Tech Info 102: HELIOS services configuration on a NIS Master

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HELIOS Tech Info #102

Fri, 27 Oct 2006

HELIOS services configuration on a NIS Master

The HELIOS services do support NIS. The configuration on a NIS Master needs however a meticulous setup.
This TechInfo describes the needed tasks for a NIS setup with HELIOS services. You should be familiar with the general NIS setup in order to use this TechInfo. More details about NIS are available in the HELIOS Base manual.
NIS can be set up with or without separate “passwd” and “group” files. In both cases, an additional NIS map is required to hold the HELIOS passwords.
If your YP directory is not “/var/yp”, set the preference “Programs/authsrv/ypdir”, e.g.
prefvalue -k Programs/authsrv/ypdir -t str "/path/to/my/ypdir"
and replace “/var/yp” with your YP directory in the following instructions.
Note that the updates u0574 / u0575 and u0576 / u0577 are required.

NIS configuration with separate “passwd” and “group” files

With this configuration, the YP directory contains separate files (“passwd” and “group”) which are used for the NIS “passwd” and “group” maps. This means that NIS users and groups are different from the local host users and groups in “/etc/passwd” and “/etc/group”.
To configure the additional NIS map “afppasswd”:
  • Edit “/var/yp/Makefile” and add rules for the “afppasswd” map. See “HELIOSDIR/etc/ypMakefile” for an example Makefile.
  • Touch “/var/yp/afppasswd” to create an initial empty map.
  • Call “make” in the “/var/yp” directory, restart NIS, and restart the HELIOS services.
All user / group changes with HELIOS Admin on the NIS Master server are stored in “/var/yp/passwd”, “/var/yp/group” and “/var/yp/afppasswd”.

NIS configuration without separate “passwd” and “group” files

With this configuration, NIS uses the files “/etc/passwd” and “/etc/group” for the “passwd” and “group” maps. This means that every user/group on the host is also a NIS user/group in the network.
To configure the additional NIS map “afppasswd”:
  • Edit “/var/yp/Makefile” and add rules for the “afppasswd” map. See “HELIOSDIR/etc/ypMakefile” for an example Makefile. In the Makefile, replace “$(DIR)/afppasswd” with “HELIOSDIR/var/conf/passwd”, where HELIOSDIR is your HELIOS installation directory.
  • Set the “ypmapdir” preference to “/etc”:
    prefvalue -k Programs/authsrv/ypmapdir -t str "/etc"
  • Call “make” in the “/var/yp” directory, restart NIS, and restart the HELIOS services.
All user / group changes with HELIOS Admin on the NIS Master server are stored in “/etc/passwd”, “/etc/group” and “HELIOSDIR/var/conf/passwd”.

Verify that NIS is working

Check that the correct NIS entries are listed with the commands
    ypcat passwd
    ypcat group
    ypcat afppasswd
The command
authutil login -n nisuser -p password -s
should give no error message and displays a user record like:
    user: nisuser
    uid: 124
    gid: 30:helios
    long name: HELIOS Software Support
    last refresh: Fri Oct 27 15:30:43 2006
    origin: NIS/YP (*)
    homedir: /home/nisuser
    groups: helios:30, usr:100
Note that the “origin” shows a NIS user.
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