[ale] another NIS question

[Arnold D. Robbins]

> > We have four workstations all cross-mounted to one another.
> > Right now we are not running NIS so if you change your 
> > password you have to do it manually on all four machines.
> > We have the users divided among the workstations so I'm 
> > wondering if we can run NIS and have each machine be 
> > client and server with each machine containing the users
> > on its local drive.  Can I do this and is it a good idea?
> 
> Yes and yes.

Well, let's qualify this.  Each machine can be client and server for NFS,
i.e. for the home directories.  *However*, for NIS, one machine should
be the server, and the others should be clients (really, one should be the
master server, and another should be a secondary, but that's a side point).
This means unifying the password files so that there are no uid and
gid conflicts.

I.e., user "arnold" on all machines should have the same uid number, and
that uid should be unique.

Check out the ORA sysadmin book and the Prentice Hall book by Nemeth et al.
If you're going to do sysadmin, you might as well read up on it, it'll be
the fastest way to learn. :-)

Arnold