Multiple rpc.nisd Parent Processes
Symptoms:
Various Database and transaction log corruption error messages containing the terms:
Possible Causes:
You have multiple independent rpc.nisd daemons running. In normal operation, rpc.nisd can spawn other child rpc.nisd daemons. This causes no problem. However, if two parent rpc.nisd daemons are running at the same time on the same machine, they will overwrite each other's data and corrupt logs and databases. (Normally, this could only occur if someone started running rpc.nisd by hand.)
Diagnosis:
Run ps -ef | grep rpc.nisd. Make sure that you have no more than one parent rpc.nisd process.
Solution:
If you have more than one "parent" rpc.nisd entries, you must kill all but one of them. Use kill -9 process-id, then run the ps command again to make sure it has died.
Note - If you started rpc.nisd with the -B option, you must also kill the rpc.nisd_resolv daemon.
If an NIS+ database is corrupt, you will also have to restore it from your most recent backup that contains an uncorrupted version of the database. You can then use the logs to update changes made to your namespace since the backup was recorded. However, if your logs are also corrupted, you will have to recreate by hand any namespace modifications made since the backup was taken.
rpc.nisd Fails
If an NIS+ table is too large, rpc.nisd may fail.
Diagnosis:
Use nisls to check your NIS+ table sizes. Tables larger than 7k may cause rpc.nisd to fail.
Solution:
Reduce the size of large NIS+ tables. Keep in mind that as a naming service NIS+ is designed to store references to objects, not the objects themselves.
NIS+ and NIS Compatibility Problems
This section describes problems having to do with NIS compatibility with NIS+ and earlier systems and the switch configuration file. Common symptoms include:
Error messages with operative clauses include:
User Cannot Log In After Password Change
Symptoms:
New users, or users who recently changed their password are unable to log in at all, or able to log in on one or more machines but not on others. The user may see error messages with operative clauses such as:
First Possible Cause:
Password was changed on NIS machine.
If a user or system administrator uses the passwd command to change a password on a Solaris operating environment machine running NIS in a domain served by NIS+ namespace servers, the user's password is changed only in that machine's /etc/passwd file. If the user then goes to some other machine on the network, the user's new password will not be recognized by that machine. The user will have to use the old password stored in the NIS+ passwd table.
Diagnosis:
Check to see if the user's old password is still valid on another NIS+ machine.
Solution:
Use passwd on a machine running NIS+ to change the user's password.
Second Possible Cause:
Password changes take time to propagate through the domain.
Diagnosis:
Namespace changes take a measurable amount of time to propagate through a domain and an entire system. This time might be as short as a few seconds or as long as many minutes, depending on the size of your domain and the number of replica servers.
Solution:
You can simply wait the normal amount of time for a change to propagate through your domain(s). Or you can use the nisping org_dir command to resynchronize your system.