Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!ames!oliveb!sun!shannon From: shannon@sun.uucp (Bill Shannon) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: YP required with NFS? Message-ID: <11219@sun.uucp> Date: Fri, 9-Jan-87 23:04:11 EST Article-I.D.: sun.11219 Posted: Fri Jan 9 23:04:11 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 10-Jan-87 06:16:56 EST References: <2231@brl-adm.ARPA> Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc. Lines: 20 Summary: access to a remote file doesn't solve the whole problem In article <2231@brl-adm.ARPA>, @BERKELEY.EDU> writes: > ... 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. Well, you named one problem. Another is that you have no distribution of the data so if you have (say) 10 netowrks with 400 machines, they would all depend on one central machine for the databases. Also, think about what happens when that machine goes down. YP distributes that load among multiple servers and provides some fault tolerance in the face of YP server crashes. All of these are good reasons to keep the name server separate from the file server. As has been said elsewhere, in small configurations the costs may outweight the advantages. In large configurations I believe the opposite is true. Bill Shannon