Homepage of the Linux NIS/NIS+ Projects

More and more Linux machines are installed as part of a network of computers. To simplify network administration, most UNIX networks run the Network Information Service.

The Network Information Service (NIS) provides a simple network lookup service consisting of databases and processes. It was formerly known as Sun Yellow Pages (YP). The functionality of the two remains the same; only the name has changed. Its purpose is to provide information, that has to be known throughout the network, to all machines on the network. Information likely to be distributed by NIS is:

• login names/passwords/home directories (/etc/passwd)
• group information (/etc/group)
• host names and IP numbers (/etc/hosts)

So, for example, if your password entry is recorded in the NIS passwd database, you will be able to login on all machines on the net which have the NIS client programs running.

NIS+ (Network Information Service Plus) was introduced by Sun Microsystems with the Solaris 2.x OS. It is compatible with NIS, but has a lot of additional features. With NIS+ it is possible to have hierarchical domains. All changes are done in the NIS+ database, it is not longer necessary to make changes on source files and to rebuild the complete maps. All changes are logged, so that a replica server can sync if it was down for some time.

Linux machines can take full advantage of existing NIS service or provide NIS service themselves. They can also act as full NIS+ clients, this support is in beta stage.

This site tries to answer questions about setting up NIS(YP) and NIS+ on your Linux machine and the necessary tools.