Managing NFS and NIS, 2nd Edition

This is a blue O'Reilly book, packed to the gunwales with information of interest to people in a hurry to optimize their systems and resolve difficulties. It's easy to locate the passage you need via the index or through the table of contents, and most entries provide a great mix of how-to material (in the form of input-and-output listings) and explanatory text (expert commentary, often with notes on applicable variations). If there's a command, option, or configuration parameter associated with NIS or NFS, you'll find documentation of it here. --David Wall

Topics covered: Network File System (NFS) and Network Information System (NIS) for Unix machines, especially Solaris (through version 8) and Linux (through version 2.2). Auto mounting, security, diskless workstations, and performance tuning are among the many details the authors address.

Product Description
Managing a network and getting it to perform well is a complex task. This new edition of Managing NFS and NIS, now based on Solaris 8 and updated for NFS Version 3, describes two absolutely essential tools for distributed computing environments: the Network Filesystem (NFS) and the Network Information System (NIS). As popular as NFS is, it's a "black box" to most users and administrators. This book takes the mystery out of planning, setting up, and debugging NFS networks; understanding the NFS automounter, diskless workstations, and PC/NFS; a new transport protocol for NFS (TCP/IP); and new security options (IPSec and Kerberos V5). There's complete coverage of diagnostic tools and utilities and of NFS client and server tuning. If you're managing a network of Unix systems, or are thinking of setting up a Unix network, you can't afford to overlook this book.

At the time I submitted this note, most of the
customer reviews for this book referred to the first edition.
One of the reviews states that the book is focused on NFS
version 2 over UDP and the old style automounter.
Actually, you'll find the second edition of our book
is more modern. New topics in the second edition
include NFS version 3, NFS over TCP, modern autofs-based
automounters, Kerberos V5 authentication for NFS, NFS Access
Control Lists (ACLs), and client side fail over.

Another difference is that first edition of this book
used SunOS 4.x as a reference for examples. The second
edition uses Solaris 8.

The second edition provides information you won't find
in NFS product documentation, such as using tools like ethereal
to debug NFS problems. This book will give you the benefit of
insights from people who probably wrote some of the code for
your clients and servers. You may find (and I hope) that
it will save you the trouble reporting a problem to
your vendor's customer support line.

Thank you for considering our book.


NFS, NIS and automounter, a great combonation!   November 20, 2002
 7 out of 7 found this review helpful

Anyone who has ever administered a network of at least 3-4 servers (if not more) will find individually updating accounts, software and such to be a burden. I found myself in this situation not too long ago, and then I picked up this book, and found the answers I was looking for.

Most Unix admins have heard of NFS and NIS but might not have considered using them together. This book gives a very thorough discussion each topic, how to set it up, how to deal with advanced issues, and how to troubleshoot. Admins will really develop an appreciation for how useful these tools can be, especially when used together.

Though LDAP is gaining prominence, a network utilizing NIS, NFS, and automounter is still a very nice network to administer. Even just learning NFS/automounter is time well spent because it is a service not likely to go away. I really felt this this book was worth the time and money because it really helps the intermediate to advanced admin better gain control of the network (instead of the network controlling him :). Definintely give this book a try. Enjoy!


The standard for NFS/NIS   March 24, 2001
 7 out of 7 found this review helpful

O'Reilly puts out so many well written books and the quality of the authors is usually the highest, and this book is no exception. Both of these subjects are covered in more than enough detail for anyone need to setup NFS, NIS, or both. It is written in such a way that you son't have to read straight through, but can use it as a reference for the information you need. I would recommend this book for anyone neededing a decent to thorough understanding of this topic.


Fairly Outdated   January 11, 2001
 20 out of 32 found this review helpful

This book is quite outdated. For example, it predates NFS version 3, NFS over TCP (mostly the default these days), or autofs.

If you are a beginner and are looking for fundamental information this book might be useful if you remain aware of its shortcomings. It covers the fundamentals of NFS V2 over UDP, and NIS quite well, and has a good troubleshooting section, which might help beginners negotiate the interoperability and tuning issues that are common in today's multivendor environments. It covers automounting issues quite well, from an "automount" (SunOS 4) perspective.