Press Release
July 10, 2001
NFS and NIS: The Glue That Holds the Network Together--O'Reilly Authors Show How to Apply it so it Sticks
Sebastopol, CA--A modern computer system that's not part of a network
is an anomaly in today's work environment and even in many homes. But
however widespread networks have become, managing a network and getting
it to perform well can still be a problem. At many sites, the Network
File System (NFS) is the glue that holds these large, diverse
collections of computers together. In fact, NFS has been implemented on
more platforms that any other network filesystem and sets the standard
for reliability, security, and performance. In a new edition based on
Solaris 8, the just-released
Managing NFS and NIS
by Hal Stern, Mike Eisler and Ricardo Labiaga (O'Reilly, US $39.95) provides a
guide for two tools that are absolutely essential to distributed computing
environments: NFS and the Network Information System (NIS, formerly
called the "yellow pages" or YP).
When the first edition of this bestselling book was released ten years
ago, networks were much less complex than they are today. As coauthor
Hal Stern explains, "Along the way, in the past ten years, the Internet
'happened.' When I started writing, 'files' were things that coders
worried about. Now anybody accessing an HTML document is directly or
indirectly accessing a file, most of the time. Some of the largest web
sites in the world sit on top of large NFS servers. The scope and
complexity of managing large volumes of files has increased greatly.
The tools are the same, but the usages are new and different--and
exciting."
The second edition of Managing NFS and NIS
provides extensive coverage of the latest developments in NFS, including new
security options (IPSec and Kerberos). It covers NFS Version 2 and 3, which are
implemented by Solaris 8, Linux, and all other modern Unix and
Unix-like operating systems. The authors also explain how to use NIS, a
distributed database service that is a companion to NFS, to reduce the
overhead of network administration by maintaining single copies of the
most important configuration files on a master server.
Coauthor Eisler says about the book, "We tried to collect information
in place to make it easier for readers to perform complex tasks. One
area of complexity is the automounter, and the book's chapter on the
topic should allow readers to quickly set up the automounter and its
maps."
The automounter is a tool that automatically mounts NFS filesystems
when they are referenced and unmounts them when they are no longer
needed. It applies NIS management to NFS configuration files so that an
administrator can edit a single NIS map and have it affect client mount
information throughout the network. Using the automounter offers
significant advantages but is not without its challenges.
Managing NFS
and NIS, Second Edition devotes an entire chapter to the subject.
Other topics covered in the new edition include:
- How to plan, set up, and debug an NFS network
- Diskless workstations
- PC/NFS
- A new transport protocol for NFS (TCP/IP)
- Diagnostic tools and utilities
- NFS client and server tuning
Managing NFS and NIS,
Second Edition provides thorough information on
how to plan a network filesystem, set it up, optimize its performance,
plug security holes, and solve many other common problems that
administrators routinely face. As coauthor Labiaga says, "My first
exposure to NFS and NIS came as a system administrator of the UNIX
computer lab in college. I later joined the NFS development team at
Sun, where I learned of many tools and techniques available to debug
NFS and network problems. Many times I looked back at my system
administration experience and wished I had been aware of such tools
when I faced network configuration problems. Hopefully this book will
help system administrators use some of these tools to administer and
debug their networks."
What critics and readers said about the first edition:
"This is one of the few places I have seen all the spells and
incantations necessary to manage NFS and NIS written down in one place,
and in terms that the average administrator can understand....I have
probably used it more in the last six months than any other reference
book I have."
--Steve Hanson, UNIX User, March 1992
"My personal favorite reference for NFS networking is Managing NFS and
NIS....This remarkable book is filled with practical information on
every facet of networking with NFS."
--Mike Tarrani, San Diego Computer
Journal, April 1994
Online Resources:
Managing NFS and NIS
By Hal Stern, Mike Eisler and Ricardo Labiaga
2nd Edition, July 2001
ISBN 1-59692-510-6, 490 pages, $39.95 (US)
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938
About O'Reilly
O'Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O'Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying "faint signals" from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.
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