Re: [PLUG] name server question

["William H. Magill" <magill@mcgillsociety.org>]

On Wednesday, August 13, 2003, at 01:20  PM, Paul wrote:
> William H. Magill wrote:
> > On Wednesday, August 13, 2003, at 12:54  AM, Paul wrote:
> > > I'm guessing that OS X also has a hosts file somewhere.
> >
> > Yes, as of 10.2 /etc/hosts is accessed "as one would expect under 
> > Unix."
> > Prior to 10.2 you had to enable its usage in addition to Netinfo.
>
> What is Netinfo?

You don't really want to know....

Basically, Netinfo is a bastard "fix" of the bastard YP.

It comes from the dark past of the Workstation Consortium - MIT, DEC, 
Sun and others.

Conceptually it is a proprietary (translated=something nobody 
understands) format database for storing system information. It is 
particularly oriented to the support of clients running from a central 
server who can login on any client as if it were there own.

NeXT used it in place of the standard unix flat files because NeXT was 
not going after the single-user workstation, but rather the "lab" 
multi-seat environment. It made perfect sense, but was(and still is) a 
royal pain in the ass to use.

Since Apple bought NeXT, it "made sense" for them to use Netinfo -- 
especially since OS X, from the begining, has supported "net-boot" 
which is the heart and soul of support for a multi-seat environment.

NIS is the "working" (i.e. contemporary) version of YP.

All of these schemes work fine in the environment they were intended 
for -- multi-seat labs. However, when they get expanded to support 
workgroups, the first thing you discover is that the machine you 
absolutely MUST access to get the workgroup back on the air again is 
locked in somebody's office that nobody has a key for!

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