Name Service

A name service provides a means of identifying and locating resources (traditionally hostnames and Internet protocol [IP] addresses) available to a network. The default name service product available in the Solaris 2.x environment is NIS+.

Namespace

The namespace is a collection of machines using a network information service such as domain name service (DNS) (yp), NIS, or NIS+, all sharing a common name.

Netmask

A network mask (netmask) is defined for each of the three classes of IP addresses, so that the system may compute the network number from any given IP address. For example:

Class C Netmask
255.255.255.0

The purpose of the netmask is to preserve the network number portion of the IP address and mask out or remove the host number portion. This is done by the system using the binary operation called logical AND. When viewing a netmask in binary, the 1 bits preserve and the 0 bits mask out.

255.255.255.0 AND 111.56.345.111 will yield 111.56.345.0

 

netstat

The netstat command displays the contents of network-related data structures in various formats, depending on the options you select.

Network

The network is a connection between machines that enables an exchange of information between those machines. Two types of networks are local area network and wide area network.

newfs

newfs is a user-friendly front end to the mkfs program for making UNIX file systems (UFS) on disk partitions. newfs calculates the appropriate parameters to use and calls mkfs.

NFS

The NFSTM is a distributed file system developed by Sun that enables a set of computers to cooperatively access each other's files in a transparent manner.

NIS

Network information services (NIS) is a non-hierarchical name service product available in the SunOSTM 4.x and Solaris 2.x environments.

NIS+

Network Information Service Plus (NIS+) is a service that provides information about users, workstations, and network resources. It makes this information available to users and applications that request it and provides security measures to protect against unauthorized access. NIS+ supports a hierarchical namespace.

NIS+ Tables

NIS+ tables are indexed lists of information in NIS+ databases. There are 16 predefined tables, such as the host table which stores the host names and network addresses of every workstation in the domain.

nisgrep

nisgrep can be used to search NIS+ tables. The command nisgrep differs from the nismatch command by its ability to accept regular expressions for the search criteria rather than simple text matches on the key fields.

nismatch

nismatch can be used to search NIS+ tables. nismatch performs literal text matches on key fields on the NIS+ table specified.

NVRAM

The non-volatile RAM chip is pluggable and because it contains the unique system hostid that is the basis for many software licenses, this chip must be retained if a new system board is installed. The chip also contains a time-of-day clock, a permanent Ethernet address, and an EEPROM section.

NVSIMM

NVSIMM is an abbreviation for nonvolatile single inline memory module, which incorporates a battery on the device to prevent data loss in the event of power failure. Battery current is shared among a group of NVSIMMs. This feature prevents memory failure should one battery fail