YP required with NFS?

[bsteve at gorgo.UUCP]

In response to: mwm at violet.BERKELEY.EDU comp.unix.wizards
Subject: YP required with NFS?

>And yes, some sort of service like yp is needed. However, yp is *not*
>the answer.  ....A nice, simple
>approach would be to make /etc/hosts, and other such things a symlink
>onto a remote mounted file system. I can't see any problems with that
>approach, (other than needing the real files there while you boot),
>but there are probably some. Anyone tried something like this yet?
>
>	<mike

Yes, yp is fundamentally the wrong way to do things. On SVR3 RFS you
can also do what you are talking about. Just use remote versions of any
files in question either via a symlink (on a sun) OR by just remotely mounting
a subtree over the one on a client machine. This may cleaner and easier
to manage. I have seen the latter on RFS and it is much more reasonable.
The clients also tend to survive server crashes quite well.

     Steve Blasingame (under Monster Island)
     ihnp4!occrsh!gorgo!bsteve
     bsteve at eris.berkeley.edu