Solaris™ 8 Advanced System Administrator's Guide, Third Edition

The NIS+ Updating Model

The NIS+ updating model is more reliable and efficient than the NIS updating model. NIS+ stores a primary copy of a directory on a master server. Zero or more replica servers store replicas of the primary copy. When you use the NIS+ commands to administer NIS+, changes are made only to the directory on the master server. When a master server receives an update to an object—whether a directory, group, link, or table—the server waits about two minutes for other updates so that it can batch the updates. When the waiting period is complete, the server stores the updates on disk and in a transaction log, along with a timestamp, and propagates the changes to its replica servers. In contrast to NIS updates, which usually take ...