Briefly, nscd is a daemon which handles passwd, group and host lookups for running programs and caches the results for the next query. You should use nscd only if you use slow Services like LDAP, NIS or NIS+

NAME

nscd - name service caching daemon

SYNOPSIS

nscd [OPTION...?

DESCRIPTION

Nscd caches libc-issued requests to the Name Service. If retrieving NSS data is fairly expensive, nscd is able to speed up consecutive access to the same data dramatically and increase overall system performance. Nscd should be run at boot time by /etc/init.d/nscd.

OPTIONS

-d, --debug

Do not fork and display messages on the current tty.

-f, --config-file NAME

Read configuration data from NAME.

-g, --statistic

Print current configuration statistic.

-i, --invalidate TABLE

Invalidate the specified TABLE, i. e. forget all data cached therein. This should be used if the database storing this information has been changed.

-K, --shutdown

Quit a running nscd process.

-S, --secure TABLE

Use a separate cache for each user.

-t, --nthreads NUMBER

Start NUMBER threads. The number of threads started denotes that maximum number of requests that can be handled simultaneously. The default is set in the configuration file. (See nscd.conf(5).)

-?, --help

Print a short help list.

--usage

Print a short usage message.

-V, --version

Print program version.

FILES

/etc/nscd.conf

Nscd configuration file. See nscd.conf(5) for more information.

/etc/nsswitch.conf

Name Service Switch configuration. See nsswitch.conf(5) for more information.

SEE ALSO

GNU C Library info file, nscd.conf(5), nsswitch.conf(5)

GNU C Library 2.2 January 07, 2001