Hi,
I've recently installed debian on a spare PC at work and I'm having
real problems getting NIS to work properly with groups. I'd appreciate any
advice on the following problem.
After installation I set up NIS using the nsswitch.conf file, the relevant
lines are as follows.
passwd: files nis
shadow: files
group: files nis
After doing this I was unable to log in as root! Whenever I tried I got an
error message
initgroups invalid argument
and was immediately thrown out. However, I could log in as either a user local
to the machine or as a user authenticated via nis without any problems and
everything works properly!
After booting from CD, mounting the partition and changing the group line to
group: files #nis
to comment out the nis part for groups I can log in fine as root or a local
user but the users being authenticated via NIS now see their group as a number
rather than a group name (due to disabling of nis group look up).
I've also tried using compat mode, i.e. nsswitch.conf is
passwd: compat
shadow: compat
group: compat
and adding +:::::: to passwd and +::: to group but I get exactly the same
problem. I've also upgraded to the latest stable version of the nis debs,
3.8.0 I think.
If it's any help, the nis server is an HP-UX machine and we also have a couple
of Mandrake boxes which are using nis via the compat mode just fine so I'm
pretty sure the problem is at the debian end.
Any thoughts greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Paul Bristow.
