Dear Sun Managers,
Thanks for the advice and suggestions; I figured out how to fix my problem.
Here's my original message:
>>>I'm having problems with NIS. I've got a "crontab" job set up to periodically
>>>(every 5 minutes) change directories to "/var/yp" on the NIS master ("blue"),
>>>and run "make". Most of the time, it works fine, but every now and then it
>>>gets into a rut, and starts kicking out a message like this:
>>>
>>> Can't bind master to send ypclear message to ypserv for map netid.byname.
>>>
>>>Once it starts behaving this way, it stays like that for quite a while (hours)
>>>before it mysteriously cures itself. The only difference that I can see is
>>>that it seems to misbehave when the system load is high, and work correctly
>>>when the system load is lower. I sometimes get other messages, but this one
>>>is the most common (~95% of the time).
>>>
>>>I've read TFM, and it offers no clues. Any ideas?
>>>
>>>The system in question is a Sun-4/75 (SPARCstation 2), running SunOS 4.1.2,
>>>with only a couple patches.
First of all, I should have mentioned that we don't have any NIS slaves,
since a few people mentioned that as a possibility.
The problem was just a matter of the system being too bogged down to keep up.
I had no idea that a "make" in "/var/yp" could take so long to complete, but
it does, at times. Most of the time, it gets done in 20 - 30 seconds, with no
problems, but sometimes it can take more than 5 minutes!
The best suggestion I got (from Perry Hutchison) was to create a lock file
before starting the "make", then delete it when the "make" was done. This
helped me identify those times when a new "make" would start up before the
old one was finished.
A couple other people asked me why I was doing a "make" so often, which is a
good question. The only maps that change very often are "hosts" and "passwd",
but when they change, we need the updated maps ASAP.
Finally, what I ended up doing was writing a script that checks the dates of
the "/etc" files, and only does the "make" if they have changed. That check
only takes seconds, regardless of system load, so I can do it as often as I
like.
Thanks to the following people for their help:
Dave(PD) Heller <hellerpd@brutus.aa.ab.com>
Steve Young <syoung@cs.buffalo.edu>
Susan M Coghlan <smc@goshawk.lanl.gov>
Perry Hutchison <perryh@pluto.rain.com>
Ted Rodriguez-Bell <ted@ssl.berkeley.edu>
Dieter Heine <heine@primse.erno.de>
Bert Robbins <bert@penril.com>
Drew
+----+ +----++----------------------------+----------------------------+
| \ GO / || Drew Montag | djm@bioimage.millipore.com |
++ + \ / + ++| Sr. Software Design Engin. | Voice: (313) 930-9900 |
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