Glossary of Terms

NIS!glossary YP!glossary NIS+!glossary glossary!NIS/YP/NIS+In this document a lot of acronyms are used. Here are the most important acronyms and a brief explanation:DBDataBase Management, a library of functions which maintain key-content pairs in a data base.DLLDynamically Linked Library, a library linked to an executable program at run-time.domainnameA name "key" that is used by NIS clients to be able to locate a suitable NIS server that serves that domainname key. Please note that this does not necessarily have anything at all to do with the DNS "domain" (machine name) of the machine(s).FTPFile Transfer Protocol, a protocol used to transfer files between two computers.libnslName services library, a library of name service calls (getpwnam, getservbyname, etc...) on SVR4 Unixes.libsocketSocket services library, a library for the socket service calls (socket, bind, listen, etc...) on SVR4 Unixes.NISNetwork Information Service, a service that provides information, that has to be known throughout the network, to all machines on the network. There is support for NIS in Linux's standard libc library, which in the following text is referred to as "traditional NIS".NIS+Network Information Service (Plus :-), essentially NIS on steroids. NIS+ is designed by Sun Microsystems Inc. as a replacement for NIS with better security and better handling of _large_ installations.NSSName Service Switch. On Solaris, the /etc/nsswitch.conf file determines the order of lookups performed when a certain piece of information is requested.RPCRemote Procedure Call. RPC routines allow C programs to make procedure calls on other machines across the network. When people talk about RPC they most often mean the Sun RPC variant.YPYellow Pages(tm), a registered trademark in the UK of British Telecom plc.TCP-IPTransmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. It is the data communication protocol most often used on Unix machines.