nis_cachemgr(1M)

NAME

nis_cachemgr — maintains a cache containing location information about NIS+ servers

SYNOPSIS

/usr/sbin/nis_cachemgr [ -i ] [ -n ] [ -v ]

DESCRIPTION

The nis_cachemgr daemon maintains a cache of the NIS+ directory objects. The cache contains location information necessary to contact the NIS+ servers that serve the various directories in the name space. This includes transport addresses, information neeeded to authenticate the server, and a time to live field which gives a hint on how long the directory object can be cached. The cache helps to improve the performance of the clients that are traversing the NIS+ name space. nis_cachemgr should be running on all the machines that are using NIS+. However, it is not required that the nis_cachemgr program be running in order for NIS+ requests to be serviced.

The cache maintained by this program is shared by all the processes that access NIS+ on that machine. The cache is maintained in a file that is memory mapped (see mmap (2)) by all the processes. On startup, nis_cachemgr initializes the cache from the cold start file (see nisinit(1M)) and preserves unexpired entries that already exist in the cache file. Thus, the cache survives machine reboots.

The nis_cachemgr program is normally started from a system startup script.

Note: The nis_cachemgr program makes NIS+ requests under the NIS+ principal name of the host on which it runs. Before running nis_cachemgr, security credentials for the host should be added to the cred.org_dir table in the host's domain using nisaddcred(1M). Credentials of type DES will be needed if the NIS+ service is operating at security level 2 (see rpc.nisd(1M)). See the WARNINGS section, below. Additionally, a 'keylogin -r' needs to be done on the machine.

nisshowcache can be used to look at the cached objects.

Options

-i: Force nis_cachemgr to ignore the previous cache file and reinitialize the cache from just the cold start file. By default, the cache manager initializes itself from both the cold start file and the old cache file, thereby maintaining the entries in the cache across machine reboots.
-n: Run nis_cachemgr in an insecure mode. By default, before adding a directory object to the shared cache, on the request of another process on the machine, it checks the encrypted signature on the request to make sure that the directory object is a valid one and is sent by an authorized server. In this mode, nis_cachemgr adds the directory object to the shared cache without making this check.
-v: This flag sets verbose mode. In this mode, the nis_cachemgr program logs not only errors and warnings, but also additional status messages. The additional messages are logged using syslog(3C) with a priority of LOG_INFO.

DIAGNOSTICS

The nis_cachemgr daemon logs error messages and warnings using syslog (see syslog(3C)). Error messages are logged to the DAEMON facility with a priority of LOG_ERR, and warning messages with a priority of LOG_WARNING. Additional status messages can be obtained using the -v option.

WARNINGS

If the host principal does not have the proper security credentials in the cred.org_dir table for its domain, then running this program without the '-n' insecure mode option may significantly degrade the performance of processes issuing NIS+ requests.

HP-UX 11i Version 2 is the last HP-UX release on which NIS+ is supported.

LDAP is the recommended replacement for NIS+. HP fully supports the industry standard naming services based on LDAP.

FILES

/var/nis/NIS_SHARED_DIRCACHE: the shared cache file
/var/nis/NIS_COLD_START: the coldstart file
/etc/init.d/rpc: initialization scripts for NIS+

AUTHOR

nis_cachemgr was developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

nis_cachemgr(1M)

Technical documentation

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