Configuring the Name Service Switch

The Name Service Switch determines where your system will look for host information when it needs to resolve a host name to an IP address.

For all types of information except host information, you can configure your system to use NIS (one of the NFS Services), NIS+ (the next generation of NIS), or the local /etc file, in any order. However, we recommend that you do not configure your system to use both NIS and NIS+.

For host information, you can configure your system to use BIND (DNS), NIS, NIS+, or the /etc/hosts file. As mentioned above, we recommend that you do not configure your system to use both NIS and NIS+.

For more information on the Name Service Switch, see “Configuring the Name Service Switch”.