I just recently converted over to using nis to deliver my /etc/passwd and /etc/group data on my home lan. All has been working fine with that for a few weeks, so I decided last night to convert over to having my workstation obtain /etc/services, /etc/protocols, /etc/ethers, and /etc/rpc data from the nis server as well. I modified /etc/nsswitch accordingling (by changing the entires for services, protocols, ether, and rpc from "files" to "nis files").
Tonight, I booted up, and issued "sudo apt-get update" as I usually do - and instead of retrieving the appropriate info, apt spit out a slew of error messages being unable to connect to any of the deb mirrors I usually use. At first, I thought the mirrors were broken, but realized that several different mirrors were unlikely to _all_ be broken the same way at the same time. Thinking my mod to nsswitch.conf could have broken something, I edited it and removed "nis" from the above databases, and retried the apt-get update, and it worked fine. Further, I found that one of my standard tricks to check network connectivity, telnetting to an smtp port on an outside server, failed - when I tried "telnet smtp.foo.com smtp", I couldn't get connected when nsswitch used nis for services, but could connect when it only used files. Because the line reads 'services nis files', I assume that nis must be returning bogus info for the service, because if it just failed to return anything, then presumable the lookup would go on to my local file which would give the right data. I then wrote a quick program to call getservbyname with a specified service parameter and print out the results, and found that I got back the same data regardless of whether nssswitch specifies nis is to be used or not. Finally, I can specify nis for ethers, rpc, and protocols without breaking anything, but if I do for services, then apt, telnet, etc are all broken. I'm not sure what's going on here to cause this to happen. Any thoughts appreciated! Thanks. nl -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
