nisplus

Sun's newer version of NIS

V8.7 and above

Sun Microsystems' NIS+ is a complete redo of its earlier NIS system. The nisplus type allows you to look up information using NIS+. The form of that type declaration looks like this:

Kname nisplus  nismap.domain

Here, the nismap is an NIS+ database-map name, such as mail_aliases.^[12] If the domain or .domain is missing, the nisplus default domain is used. If the entire nismap.domain is missing, the default becomes mail_aliases.org_dir. The domain org_dir contains all the systemwide administration tables.

^[12] Note that under NIS+, names cannot contain a dot, whereas under NIS they can—for example, mail_aliases for NIS+ but mail.aliases for NIS.

Any lookup failures that can be retried will automatically be retried up to five times, with a sleep(3) of 2 seconds between each try. If the map.domain doesn't exist in the local NIS+ system, no error is reported.

Only a modest number of database switches are available for this type. They are listed in Table 23-20.

Table 23-20. The nisplus database-map type K command switches
Switch	§	Description
`-a`	-a	Append tag on successful match
`-D`	-D	Don't use this database map if DeliveryMode=defer
`-f`	-f	Don't fold keys to lowercase
`-k`	-k	Specify column for key or key name
`-m`	-m	Suppress replacement on match
`-o`	-o	This database map is optional
`-q`	-q	Don't strip quotes from key
`-S`	-S	Space replacement character
`-T`	-T	Suffix to append on temporary failure
`-t`	-t	Ignore temporary errors
`-v`	-v	Specify the value's column

You can use the -k switch to specify a key column to look up. Under nisplus, columns are named, so the -k must be followed by a valid name. You can also use the -v switch to specify the value's column, and a name. If the -v is omitted, the last column becomes the default.

Table 23-20. The nisplus database-map type K command switches