In this document a lot of acronyms are used. Here are the most important acronyms and a brief explanation:
DataBase Management, a library of functions which maintain key-content pairs in a data base.
Dynamically Linked Library, a library linked to an executable program at run-time.
File Transfer Protocol, a protocol used to transfer files between two computers.
Network Information Service, a service that provides information, that has to be known throughout the network, to all machines on the network.
network services library, a library of network service calls (socket, bind, etc...) on SYSV Unixes.
This is a mutation of the word NIS and represents the NIS+ services library written by Peter Eriksson (pen@lysator.liu.se).
Remote Procedure Call. RPC routines allow C programs to make procedure calls on other machines across the network.
Yellow Pages(tm), a registered trademark in the UK of British Telecom plc.
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. It's a data communication protocol often used on Unix machines.
The next three lines are quoted from the Sun(tm) System & Network Administration Manual:
"NIS was formerly known as Sun Yellow Pages (YP) but
the name Yellow Pages(tm) is a registered trademark
in the United Kingdom of British Telecom plc and may
not be used without permission."
NIS stands for Network Information Service. It's purpose is to provide information, that has to be known throughout the network, to all machines on the network. Information likely to be distributed by NIS is:
So, for example, if your password entry is recorded in the NIS passwd database, you will be able to login on all machines on the net which have the NIS client programs running.
Sun is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. licensed to SunSoft, Inc.
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