NIS

Network Information Services, also called Yellow Pages or yp, is supported on IRIX. Similar to Active Directory or LDAP it provides indexing of hostnames and DNS configuration synchronization.

Transfer NIS Master In IRIX

Tar up the directory with the NIS flat files live in and copy it over to the new master.

8:12am dragon  /etc/yp %ls
aliases                      local.make.script.pre-6.5.x
auto.direct                  mac
auto.home                    netgroup
auto.master                  netid
auto.net                     networks
auto_master                  nsswitch.conf.nisserv
automount.options            passwd
bootparams                   protocols
capability                   rpc
clearance                    rpc.passwd.options
ethers                       services
group                        ypdomain
hosts                        ypmaster.options
jlimits                      ypservers
local.make.script

Retain a copy of the various system files that are created or changed. Check /var/yp/ for the presence of custom local scripts :

8:13am dragon  /var/yp %ls
local.make.script            ypmake
local.make.script.pre-6.5.x  ypmake.log
make.script                  ypxfr_1pd
mdbm_dump                    ypxfr_1perday
mdbm_parse                   ypxfr_1perhour
updaters                     ypxfr_1ph
ypdomain                     ypxfr_2pd
ypinit                       ypxfr_2perday

Check make.script to verify that it hasn't been hand edited. Next, check /etc/config/yp* :

8:15am dragon  /etc/config %foreach f ( yp* )

foreach? echo $f ; cat $f ; echo "\n"
foreach? end
yp
on


ypmaster
on


ypmaster.options
DIR=/etc/yp
PWFILE=/etc/yp/passwd
ALIASES=/etc/yp/aliases


ypserv
on


8:18am dragon  /etc/config %grep yp * | grep -v typ | grep -v Typ
rpc.passwd.options:/etc/yp/passwd
ypmaster.options:DIR=/etc/yp
ypmaster.options:PWFILE=/etc/yp/passwd
ypmaster.options:ALIASES=/etc/yp/aliases

yppasswd synchronizes passwords and users across.

Once these are checked, run ypinit -m on the new server and follow up with a ypinit -s on any slave systems This will take care of changing the yp/ypmaster/ypserv file contents from off to on. The one thing ypinit will not do is create /var/yp/ypdomain. This file needs to exist and the only thing it should contain is the NIS domain name. Create this file on all machines in this domain , be they the master, the slaves, or the clients.

One last thing:

8:40am dragon  /etc/yp %cat nsswitch.conf.nisserv
#
# Cat this file onto the end of /var/ns/nsswitch.conf.nisserv
# and /var/ns/domains/<nisdomain>/nsswitch.conf
#
auto.master:            nisserv
auto.direct:            nisserv
auto.net:               nisserv
auto.home:              nisserv

If using maps that aren't in the default list, the slaveswon't accept maps they don't already have copies of, and the easiest way to make sure propagation occurs properly is to have everything in place when running ypinit on them (there are ways to add maps to slaves after the fact, but this is much more straightforward).