niscat Returns: Server busy. Try Again

Symptoms:

You run niscat and get an error message indicating that the server is busy.

Possible Cause:

• The server is busy with a heavy load, such as when doing a resync.

• The server is out of swap space.

Diagnosis:

Run swap -s to check your server's swap space.

Solution:

You must have adequate swap and disk space to run NIS+. If necessary, increase your space.

NIS+ Queries Hang After Changing Host Name

Symptoms:

Setting the host name for an NIS+ server to be fully qualified is not recommended. If you do so, and NIS+ queries then just hang with no error messages, check the following possibilities:

Possible Cause:

Fully qualified host names must meet the following criteria:

• The domain part of the host name must be the same as the name returned by the domainname command.

• After the setting the host name to be fully qualified, you must also update all the necessary /etc and /etc/inet files with the new host name information.

• The host name must end in a period.

Solution:

Kill the NIS+ processes that are hanging and then kill rpc.nisd on that host or server. Rename the host to match the two requirements listed above. Then reinitialize the server with nisinit. (If queries still hang after you are sure that the host is correctly named, check other problem possibilities in this section.)

NIS+ System Resource Problems

This section describes problems having to do with lack of system resources such as memory, disk space, and so forth.

Resource Problem Symptoms

Error messages with operative clauses such as:

• No memory

• Out of disk space

• "Cannot [do something] with log" type messages

• Unable to fork

Insufficient Memory

Lack of sufficient memory or swap space on the system you are working with will cause a wide variety of NIS+ problems and error messages. As a short-term, temporary solution, try to free additional memory by killing unneeded windows and processes. If necessary, exit your windowing system and work from the terminal command line. If you still get messages indicating inadequate memory, you will have to install additional swap space or memory, or switch to a different system that has enough swap space or memory.

Under some circumstances, applications and processes may develop memory leaks and grow too large. you can check the current size of an application or process by running:

ps -el

The sz (size) column shows the current memory size of each process. If necessary, compare the sizes with comparable processes and applications on a machine that is not having memory problems to see if any have grown too large.

Insufficient Disk Space

Lack of disk space will cause a variety of error messages. A common cause of insufficient disk space is failure to regularly remove tmp files and truncate log files. log and tmp files grow steadily larger unless truncated. The speed at which these files grow varies from system to system and with the system state. log files on a system that is working inefficiently or having namespace problems will grow very fast.

Note - If you are doing a lot of troubleshooting, check your log and tmp files frequently. Truncate log files and remove tmp files before lack of disk space creates additional problems. Also check the root directory and home directories for core files and delete them.

The way to truncate log files is to regularly checkpoint your system (Keep in mind that a checkpoint process may take some time and will slow down your system while it is being performed, checkpointing also requires enough disk space to create a complete copy of the files before they are truncated.)

To checkpoint a system, run nisping -C.

Insufficient Processes

On a heavily loaded machine it is possible that you could reach the maximum number of simultaneous processes that the machine is configured to handle. This causes messages with clauses like "unable to fork". The recommended method of handling this problem is to kill any unnecessary processes. If the problem persists, you can reconfigure the machine to handle more processes as described in your system administration documentation.

NIS+ User Problems

This section describes NIS+ problems that a typical user might encounter.

User Problem Symptoms

• User cannot log in.

• User cannot rlogin to other domain

User Cannot Log In

There are many possible reasons for a user being unable to log in:

• User forgot password. To set up a new password for a user who has forgotten the previous one, run passwd for that user on another machine (naturally, you have to be the NIS+ administrator to do this).

• Mistyping password. Make sure the user knows the correct password and understands that passwords are case-sensitive and that the letter "o" is not interchangeable with the numeral "0," nor is the letter "l" the same as the numeral "1."

• "Login incorrect" type message. For causes other than simply mistyping the password, see Login Incorrect Message.

• The user's password privileges have expired (see Password Privilege Expiration).

• An inactivity maximum has been set for this user, and the user has passed it (see Specifying Maximum Number of Inactive Days).

• The user's nsswitch.conf file is incorrect. The passwd entry in that file must be one of the following five permitted configurations:

  • passwd: files

  • passwd: files nis

  • passwd: files nisplus

  • passwd: compat

  • passwd: compat passwd_compat: nisplus

  Any other configuration will prevent a user from logging in.