NIS and Xserves w/10.3.5

[tkw4u]

I’m gathering that many people aren’t using NIS for authentication with their OS X servers. I’ve tried contacting several folks at Apple as well as posting on several lists with no help so far.

We have a cluster of 32 Xserves and 10 Linux boxes. We have an NIS server running on a Linux box. The Xserves get their authentication from there using the Directory Services plug-in. They get their information just fine. The problem is they never update it! If you change a password on the NIS master if never gets propagated to the Xserves unless you reboot them. The Linux boxes update their password caches immediately.

We’ve tried changing the lookup order in NetInfo, running “lookupd -flushcache” and nothing seems to work. Finding a solution for this problem could actually help with a larger possible issue later on.

I’d love to hear anyone else’s thoughts or suggestions. And yes, I’ve googled every possible combination of NIS, Apple, Panther and OS X. And yes, I’ve seen the Bresnik site. 🙂

Thanks!

[tkw4u]

Killing off DirectoryServices did indeed cause it to get the new NIS map. It’s a somewhat brute force method but it’s also the only method suggested that’s ever worked!

Many thanks!

[tkw4u]

Just an update to my last post. Killing DirectoryServices does indeed force OS X server to get the latest NIS mapping. However, the local cache still retains the old password. The result being that you can log in with both the old and the new password.

The solution to that is to run ‘lookupd -flushcache’ immediately after killing DirectoryServices. That seems to flush out the old password while retaining the the new, updated password.

[xnetzero]

This is my first time working with NIS on MOSX.3.9 server and I’ve run in to a weird problem that I’m having a hard time pinning down any documentation on.

It could just be my unfamiliarity with it, but any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Basically–

I’m able to configure directory access to authenticate via our network’s NIS system. It’s fine and works. What’s strange is that when I log into the host in question with one of the local accounts (ie the admin account) it seems like the system is searching NIS for permissions rather than the local netinfo database.

I’ve looked in netinfo and NISagent is at the bottom of the list for lookupd (and it’s associated directories). I would assume that NIS should be queried last. Ultimately, it takes about five minutes for an application to launch or to authenticate commands, etc…

Any dieas?

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