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Network Information Services (NIS and NIS+) Guide


Troubleshooting NIS+ Namespace Administration Problems

This section describes problems that may be encountered in the course of routine namespace administration work. This set of problems can cause the following symptoms:

Illegal Object Problems

If a problem is caused by an illegal object, the system displays Illegal object type for operation or other messages that indicate an object problem. There are a number of possible causes for such error message:

nisinit Fails

Make sure that:

Checkpoint Keeps Failing

If checkpoint operations with a nisping -C command consistently fail, make sure you have sufficient swap and disk space. Check for error messages in syslog. Check for core files that are filling up space.

Cannot Add User to a Group

A user must first be an NIS+ principal client with a local credential in the domain's cred table before the user can be added as a member of a group in that domain. A DES credential alone is not sufficient.

Logs Grow too Large

Failure to regularly checkpoint your system with nisping -C causes your log files to grow too large. Logs are not cleared on a master until all replicas for that master are updated. If a replica is down or otherwise out of service or unreachable, the master's logs for that replica cannot be cleared. Thus, if a replica is going to be down or out of service for a period of time, remove it as a replica from the master by running nisrmdir -f -s for all directories, including groups_dir and org_dir.

Lack of Disk Space

Lack of sufficient disk space causes a variety of error messages. (See Insufficient Disk Space for additional information.

Cannot Truncate Transaction Log File

Check to make sure that the file in question exists, is readable, and that you have permission to write to it. You can use:

Most likely, you cannot truncate an existing log file for which you have the proper permissions because of lack of disk space. (The checkpoint process first creates a duplicate temporary file of the log before truncating the log and then removing the temporary file. If there is not enough disk space for the temporary file, the checkpoint process cannot proceed.) Check your available disk space and release additional space if necessary.

Domain Name Confusion

Domain names play a key role in many NIS+ commands and operations. To avoid confusion, you must remember that except for root servers, all NIS+ masters and replicas are clients of the domain above the domain that they serve. If you treat a server or replica as if it were a client of the domain that it serves, you may get Generic system error or Possible loop detected in namespace directoryname:domainname error messages.

For example, the machine aladin might be a client of the subwiz.wiz.com. domain. If the master server of the subwiz.wiz.com. subdomain is the machine merlin, then merlin is a client of the wiz.com. domain. When using, specifying, or changing domains, remember these rules:

Thus, in this example domain, the fully qualified name of the aladin machine is aladin.subwiz.wiz.com. The fully qualified name of the merlin machine is merlin.wiz.com. The name merlin.subwiz.wiz.com. causes an error because merlin is a client of wiz.com., not of subwiz.wiz.com.

Inability to Delete org_dir or groups_dir

Always delete org_dir and groups_dir before deleting their parent directory. If you use nisrmdir to delete the domain before deleting the domain's groups_dir and org_dir, you will be unable to delete either of those two subdirectories.


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