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The YP/NIS functions allow developers to retrieve data from NIS.
Network Information Service (NIS) was developed by Sun in the late 1980s as part of their new Network File System (NFS). NIS allows system administrators to easily distribute homogeneous administrative/configuration files across multiple systems within a network. The PHP YP/NIS functions roughly correspond to functions of a similar name in the NIS C API.
The service was originally called Yellow Pages (YP)[1] - despite the name change to Network Information Service, the YP abbreviation has stayed in popular use.
A full discussion of YP/NIS is far beyond the scope of this book. For more information:
| - See your system documentation (on *nix systems, man -k NIS will often return a wealth of data) |
| - Visit http://docs.sun.com/ and search for documentation on NIS and NIS+ |
| - Try Managing NFS and NIS by Hal Stern (O'Reilly and Associates) |
To enable the YP/NIS functions in PHP, you will need to set the --enable-yp flag when running configure. (If configuring PHP 3, use the --with-yp flag instead.)
Caution
While YP/NIS offers system administrators greater convenience, it has relatively high security risks. Older implementations of the service would distribute files managed by NIS to outside hosts with relatively little coaxing; newer implementations of the service continue to have security issues.
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Table of Contents
[1] "The Network Information Service (NIS) was formerly known as Sun Yellow Pages (YP). The functionality of the two remains the same; only the name has changed. The name Yellow Pages is a registered trademark in the United Kingdom of British Telecommunications plc, and may not be used without permission." - from the Solaris 2.6 Reference Manual AnswerBook Man Pages - man ypmake