View Source: NSS - Waikato Linux Users Group

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[Acronym] for __N__ame __S__ervice __S__witch

The [NSS] is a glibc mechanism for providing multiple methods of accessing common databases such as the password or hosts database. It is commonly used to provide an interface to both local <tt>/etc/passwd</tt> (and shadow) files, and a remote authentication mechanism such as [NIS] or [LDAP].

The config file for specifying backend methods for each database is /etc/nsswitch.conf -- see the nsswitch.conf(5) ManPage.

The databases available for configuration within the [NSS] are:

aliases(5)::
    Mail aliases
ethers(5)::
    Ethernet numbers,
group(5)::
    Groups of users
hosts(5)::
    Host names and numbers.
netgroup(5)::
    Network wide list of host and users
networks(5)::
    Network names and numbers
protocols(5)::
    Network protocols
passwd(5)::
    User passwords
rpc(5)::
    Remote procedure call names and numbers,
services(5)::
    Network services
shadow(5)::
    Shadow user passwords

Most of these databases are normally only configured for flatfile access: protocols and services, for example, look up only in <tt>/etc/protocols</tt> and <tt>/etc/services</tt>. You could serve these from [LDAP], or from a [DBM] file, or from an [SQL] DataBase, or so on.

See http://www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/glibc/libc_591.html for more information on the glibc [NSS]

2 pages link to NSS:

Last edited on Monday, October 4, 2004 4:01:36 pm by JohnMcPherson

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