.\" Copyright (c) 1995, 1996 .\" Bill Paul . All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software .\" must display the following acknowledgement: .\" This product includes software developed by Bill Paul. .\" 4. Neither the name of the author nor the names of contributors .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software .\" without specific prior written permission. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY Bill Paul AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL Bill Paul OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" $FreeBSD: src/usr.sbin/rpc.ypxfrd/rpc.ypxfrd.8,v 1.9.2.3 2003/03/11 22:31:32 trhodes Exp $ .\" .Dd June 2, 1996 .Dt RPC.YPXFRD 8 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm rpc.ypxfrd .Nd "NIS map transfer server" .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm .Op Fl p Ar path .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Nm utility is used to speed up the distribution of very large NIS maps from NIS master to NIS slave servers. The normal method for transferring maps involves several steps: .Bl -bullet -offset indent .It The master server calls .Xr yppush 8 to inform the slave servers to start a transfer. .It The slave servers invoke .Xr ypxfr 8 , which reads the entire contents of a map from the master server using the .Fn yp_all function. .It The .Xr ypxfr 8 program then creates a new map database file by using the .Xr db 3 library hash method to store the data that it receives from the server. .It When all the data has been retrieved, .Xr ypxfr 8 moves the new file into place and sends .Xr ypserv 8 on the local machine a YPPROC_CLEAR to tell it to refresh its database handles. .El .Pp This process can take several minutes when there are very large maps involved. For example: a passwd database with several tens of thousands of entries can consume several megabytes of disk space, and it can take the .Xr db 3 library package a long time to sort and store all the records in a hash database. Consider also that there are two sets of map files: .Pa master.passwd.by{name,uid} and .Pa passwd.by{name,uid} . .Pp The .Nm utility speeds up the transfer process by allowing NIS slave servers to simply copy the master server's map files rather than building their own from scratch. Simply put, .Nm implements an RPC-based file transfer protocol. Transferring even a multi-megabyte file in this fashion takes only a few seconds compared to the several minutes it would take even a reasonably fast slave server to build a new map from scratch. .Pp The .Nm utility uses the same access restriction mechanism as .Xr ypserv 8 . This means that slave servers will only be permitted to transfer files if the rules in the .Pa securenets database permit it (see .Xr ypserv 8 for more information on .Pa securenets ) . Furthermore, only slave servers using reserved ports will be allowed to transfer the .Pa master.passwd maps. .Sh OPTIONS The following option is available: .Bl -tag -width indent .It Fl p Ar path This option can be used to override the default path to the location of the NIS map databases. The compiled-in default path is .Pa /var/yp . .El .Sh FILES .Bl -tag -width Pa -compact .It Pa /var/yp/[domainname]/[maps] The NIS maps for a particular NIS domain. .El .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr yp 8 , .Xr yppush 8 , .Xr ypserv 8 , .Xr ypxfr 8 .Sh AUTHORS .An Bill Paul Aq Mt wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu .Sh BUGS The .Dx .Nm ypxfrd protocol is not compatible with that used by SunOS. This is unfortunate but unavoidable: Sun's protocol is not freely available, and even if it were it would probably not be useful since the SunOS NIS v2 implementation uses the original ndbm package for its map databases whereas the .Dx implementation uses Berkeley DB. These two packages use vastly different file formats. Furthermore, ndbm is byte-order sensitive and not very smart about it, meaning that am ndbm database created on a big endian system can't be read on a little endian system.