Solution provider's takeaway: If you're looking for vital information in your customers' Linux systems, you're going to need to know how to find it. Get information in this chapter excerpt on how to execute specific searches, including for information types such as netgroups and methods such as nis.
With the advent of NIS and DNS, finding user and system information was no longer a simple matter of searching a local file. Where once you looked in /etc/passwd to get user information and in /etc/hosts to find system address information, you can now use several methods to find this type of information. The /etc/nsswitch.conf (name service switch configuration) file specifies the methods to use and the order in which to use them when looking for a certain type of information. You can also specify what action the system takes based on whether a method works or fails.
Each line in nsswitch.conf specifies how to search for a piece of information, such as a user's password. A line in nsswitch.conf has the following format:
info: method [[action]] [method [[action]]...]
where info is the type of information that the line describes, method is the method used to find the information, and action is the response to the return status of the preceding method. The action is enclosed within square brackets.
This chapter excerpt on System Administration: Core Concepts (download PDF) is taken from A Practical Guide to Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (5th Edition). Solution providers will get information and analysis on Fedora 12 and RHEL 5, including topics such as the Linux command line, new GUIs and desktop customization. Learn best practices for system/network administration tasks, including new coverage of network monitoring with Cacti.
When called upon to supply information that nsswitch.conf describes, the system examines the line with the appropriate info field. It uses the methods specified on the line starting with the method on the left. By default, when it finds the desired information, the system stops searching. Without an action specification, when a method fails to return a result, the system tries the next method. It is possible for the search to end without finding the requested information.
The nsswitch.conf file commonly controls searches for users (in passwd), passwords (in shadow), host IP addresses, and group information. The following list describes most of the types of information (info in the format discussed earlier) that nsswitch.conf controls searches for:
Following is a list of the types of information that nsswitch.conf controls searches for (method in the syntax shown on page 455). For each type of information, you can specify one or more of the following methods:
The information provided by two or more methods may overlap: For example, files and nis may each provide password information for the same user. With overlapping information, you need to consider which method you want to be authoritative (take precedence) and then put that method at the left of the list of methods.
The default nsswitch.conf file lists methods without actions, assuming no overlap (which is normal). In this case, the order is not critical: When one method fails, the system goes to the next one; all that is lost is a little time. Order becomes critical when you use actions between methods or when overlapping entries differ.
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The first of the following lines from nsswitch.conf causes the system to search for password information in /etc/passwd and, if that fails, to use NIS to find the information. If the user you are looking for is listed in both places, the information in the local file would be used—it would be authoritative. The second line uses NIS; if that fails, it searches /etc/hosts; if that fails, it checks with DNS to find host information.
passwd files nis
hosts nis files dns
Each method can optionally be followed by an action item that specifies what to do if the method succeeds or fails for any of a number of reasons. An action item has the following format:
[[!]STATUS=action]
where the opening and closing square brackets are part of the format and do not indicate that the contents are optional; STATUS (by convention uppercase although it is not case sensitive) is the status being tested for; and action is the action to be taken if STATUS matches the status returned by the preceding method. The leading exclamation point (!) is optional and negates the status.
STATUS may have the following values:
Values for action are as follows:
Example: The following line from nsswitch.conf causes the system first to use DNS to search for the IP address of a given host. The action item following the DNS method tests whether the status returned by the method is not (!) UNAVAIL.
hosts dns [!UNAVAIL=return] files
The system takes the action associated with the STATUS (return) if the DNS method does not return UNAVAIL (!UNAVAIL)—that is, if DNS returns SUCCESS, NOTFOUND, or TRYAGAIN. As a consequence, the following method (files) is used only when the DNS server is unavailable: If the DNS server is not unavailable (read the two negatives as "is available"), the search returns the domain name or reports that the domain name was not found. The search uses the files method (check the local /etc/hosts file) only if the server is not available.
compat Method: ± in passwd, group, and shadow Files
You can put special codes in the /etc/passwd, /etc/group, and /etc/shadow files that cause the system, when you specify the compat method in nsswitch.conf, to combine and modify entries in the local files and the NIS maps. That is, a plus sign (+) at the beginning of a line in one of these files adds NIS information; a minus sign (–) removes information.
For example, to use these codes in the passwd file, specify passwd: compat in nsswitch. conf. The system then goes through the passwd file in order, adding or removing the appropriate NIS entries when it reaches each line that starts with a + or –.
Although you can put a plus sign at the end of the passwd file, specify passwd: compat in nsswitch.conf to search the local passwd file, and then go through the NIS map, it is more efficient to put passwd: file nis in nsswitch.conf and not modify the passwd file.
About the author:
Mark G. Sobell has more than 20 years
of experience working with Unix and Linux. President of Sobell Associates Inc., Sobell is the
author of A Practical
Guide to Ubuntu Linux (3rd edition).
This excerpt is from Mark Sobell's A Practical Guide to Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (5th Edition), published by Prentice Hall Professional. For more information, visit: www.informit.com/title/0137060882.
24 Nov 2010