Managing NFS and NIS (2nd Edition) review

It's still pretty much true to say that, at a great many sites at least, it's NFS (Network Filesystem) and NIS (Network Information Service) that remain the glue holding together a diverse and vast collection of computers. Yet they also remain something of a 'gruesome twosome' to the majority of users, and delving into this box of worms and making sense of it all is often thought to be a nigh on impossible task.

This is where this O'Reilly classic, Managing NFS and NIS, comes in, focusing on the way both NFS and NIS work and how to use them to solve problems in a distributed computing environment. The first 12 chapters contain explanations of the implementation and operation of NFS/NIS, while chapters 13 to 18 cover the more advanced administrative and debugging techniques, performance analysis and tuning aspects.

The second section of the book will probably appeal to PC Pro readers the most. It forms a decent and thorough guide to the ongoing maintenance and debugging of the network by delving into low-level details such as the effects of network partitioning hardware and the steps involved in a remote procedure call, for instance. The usual high standard of appendices expected from O'Reilly is maintained, with three covering IP packet routing, NFS problem diagnosis and tunable parameters respectively.

The first edition of the book has already established itself as an essential item in the toolkit of those managing networks of Unix boxes, being the only practical hands-on reference devoted just to this one subject. The second edition brings you up to date with the latest developments such as IPSec and Kerberos security options and NFS over TCP. It's based on the Solaris 8 implementation on NFS/NIS, using Sun's OS as its frame of reference. This means that if you're using a non-Solaris system you have to double up and apply the advice contained in the O'Reilly book in conjunction with your specific vendor's documentation. NFS 2 and 3 are both covered, and there's a nod in the direction of NFS 4 as well, which is nice.

Author: Davey Winder