*BSD News Article 61557


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From: wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu (Bill Paul)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: NIS+ support? *smirk*
Date: 16 Feb 1996 21:09:41 GMT
Organization: Columbia University Center for Telecommunications Research
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Daring to challenge the will of the almighty Leviam00se,
Michael Hohmuth SET.RS (hohmuth@gozo.gmd.de) had the courage to say:

: In article <kehletDMuHxv.CIK@netcom.com> kehlet@netcom.com (Steven
: Kehlet) writes:

: > I think NIS+ is a major pain.. but I was wondering if anyone's 
: > looking at it, or thinking of taking a look at it.
: > 
: > I work at an ISP; a bunch of the guys there are ex-Sun freaks.  
: > So I managed to get FreeBSD into the office, but then they said, 
: > "So where's NIS+?".

Nobody has NIS+ except Solaris at this point. To me, it's just one more
reason to avoid Solaris.

: There's a freeware NIS+ client library which perhaps could be ported
: to FreeBSD; it should be at <URL:ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/NYS/libs/>.

: (I've never used it myself (I didn't even look at it), I've just
: remembered the pointer.)

I have looked at it.

a) It isn't finished yet.
b) It's GPL'ed. (Don't get me started.)
c) The only real advantage that NIS+ has over NIS is security (people
   can't steal your maps by guessing your domain name), but that security
   depends on the presence of Secure RPC. FreeBSD doesn't have that either,
   largely because Secure RPC uses Diffie-Hellman key exchange, and there
   are apparently some legal issues involved.
d) If I went mad tomorrow and decided to start work on NIS+, I
   would not be satisfied with just a client library. I would want to make
   a server too, which means it could take a while.

Even though I've spent some time going over the RPC protocol definition
files for NIS+, I still haven't been able to make sense of them. I've been
too busy to even start learning how NIS+ is supposed to work never mind
clone it.

-Bill

--
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Work:         wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu | Center for Telecommunications Research
Home:  wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu | Columbia University, New York City
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