Summary

This chapter covered all the name service topics that are included in the Solaris 10 System Administrator exams. This includes the local files in the /etc directory, NIS, NIS+, DNS, and LDAP.

This chapter described how to configure the master server, slave servers, and clients for the most commonly used name service, NIS. Configuring clients for DNS and LDAP were also covered briefly. The name service switch file used by the operating system for any network information lookups was covered.

In addition, this chapter described the Sun Java System Directory Server that could soon replace NIS+, and eventually NIS. If you will be migrating from NIS+, you can refer to the section titled "Transitioning from NIS+ to LDAP" in the Solaris 10 System Administration Guide: Naming and Directory Services (NIS+), which is available on the Solaris Documentation CD and the online documentation site http://docs.sun.com.

Finally in this chapter, we described the Name Service Cache Daemon used to speed up requests for the most common name service requests, and also the getent command, which is used to retrieve entries from specified name service databases.

Of course, better understanding of the naming services will come as you use the systems described and become experienced over time. Many large networks that use a name service are heterogeneous, meaning that they have more than just Solaris systems connected to the network. Refer to the vendor's documentation for each particular system to understand how each different operating system implements name services. You will see that most are similar in their implementation, with only subtle differences.