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38 .Nd "NIS map transfer server"
45 utility is used to speed up the distribution of very large NIS maps
46 from NIS master to NIS slave servers.
47 The normal method for transferring
48 maps involves several steps:
49 .Bl -bullet -offset indent
51 The master server calls
53 to inform the slave servers to start a transfer.
55 The slave servers invoke
57 which reads the entire contents of a map from the master server
58 using the yp_all() function.
62 program then creates a new map database file by using the
64 library hash method to store the data that it receives from the server.
66 When all the data has been retrieved,
68 moves the new file into place and sends
70 on the local machine a YPPROC_CLEAR to tell it to refresh its
74 This process can take several minutes when there are very large
76 For example: a passwd database with several tens of
77 thousands of entries can consume several megabytes of disk space,
80 library package a long time to sort and store all the records
82 Consider also that there are two sets of map
84 .Pa master.passwd.by{name,uid}
86 .Pa passwd.by{name,uid} .
90 utility speeds up the transfer process by allowing NIS slave servers to
91 simply copy the master server's map files rather than building their
95 implements an RPC-based file transfer protocol.
97 a multi-megabyte file in this fashion takes only a few seconds compared
98 to the several minutes it would take even a reasonably fast slave server
99 to build a new map from scratch.
103 utility uses the same access restriction mechanism as
105 This means that slave servers will only be permitted to transfer
106 files if the rules in the
108 database permit it (see
110 for more information on
112 Furthermore, only slave servers using reserved
113 ports will be allowed to transfer the
117 The following option is available:
118 .Bl -tag -width indent
120 This option can be used to override the default path to
121 the location of the NIS
123 The compiled-in default path is
127 .Bl -tag -width Pa -compact
128 .It Pa /var/yp/[domainname]/[maps]
129 The NIS maps for a particular NIS domain.
137 .An Bill Paul Aq Mt wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu
142 protocol is not compatible with that used by SunOS.
144 but unavoidable: Sun's protocol is not freely available, and even if it
145 were it would probably not be useful since the SunOS NIS v2 implementation
146 uses the original ndbm package for its map databases whereas the
148 implementation uses Berkeley DB.
149 These two packages use vastly different
151 Furthermore, ndbm is byte-order sensitive and not very
152 smart about it, meaning that am ndbm database created on a big endian
153 system cannot be read on a little endian system.