Large NIS Maps or Many Maps May Cause SFU Processing Delays (323296)

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In an NIS domain, shared common information is maintained in a central location. On standalone UNIX computers, some files are common to almost all implementations. Examples of these files include the Hosts, Passwd, and Group files. The NIS domain structure permits central administration and storage of these files. As part of an NIS domain, these data files are called maps.

After you migrate NIS to Active Directory, the information that is contained in NIS maps is stored in Active Directory and is replicated to all domain controllers. However, a single domain controller is designated as the NIS Master. The NIS Master, for backward compatibility, also maintains disk files. These disk files (or map cache files) are constructed from Active Directory information on a periodic basis. These files are pushed to down-level (UNIX) NIS slaves.

With a large NIS map, it may take longer than you expect to generate the associated map cache file. For example, for a 60-KB Group file, it takes about 30 minutes to create a map cache file. In this case, two files are generated: Group.byname and Group.bygid. Similar delays may occur if there are many maps.
If the update interval is triggered while the map cache files are being updated, redundant creation of the map cache files occurs. This may cause the updating of the NIS slaves with accurate maps to take longer than you expect.

In SFU 2.0, the update interval is set at a default value of 30 minutes. In SFU 3.0, this value has a default setting of 24 hours. You can change the value in SFU Administrator under Server for NIS, or you can use the Nisadmin command-line tool.

For information about using Nisadmin, see the SFU Help file.