Tuesday Tiny Techie Tip

ypcat(1)

% ypcat -x
Use "passwd" for map "passwd.byname"
Use "group" for map "group.byname"
Use "networks" for map "networks.byaddr"
Use "hosts" for map "hosts.byaddr"
Use "protocols" for map "protocols.bynumber"
Use "services" for map "services.byname"
Use "aliases" for map "mail.aliases"
Use "ethers" for map "ethers.byname"

aliases

The most useful of the NIS maps, aliases, contains our local email aliases. Since the alias name itself isn't part of the data, you need to include the "-k" flag so that ypcat will report the key as well as the value:

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% ypcat -k aliases | grep sw_all
sw_all all_sw
% ypcat -k aliases | grep all_sw
all_r&d mci-here,all_hw,qualeng,id,all_sw,allsys,transducers,adv_dev,program
all_q5000 all_sw,all_hw,researchers,marketing,program,systems,probes,adv_dev,ultra,pcb,engser,transducers,cadmec,id,frontend,qualeng
sw_all all_sw
se all_sw,diag
all_sw sw_staff,sw_sde
all-sw all_sw

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As you can see, the values of the aliases are multiple levels deep, so you may have to look up several values to figure out all the people who would get email if you sent to "se" (se expands to all_sw and diag, all_sw expands to sw_staff and sw_sde, sw_staff expands to sw_mgr and sw_pmr, etc...)

group

The group map shows which users are associated with which UNIX groups. However, the map does not contain the whole story since each user's principal group is noted not in the group map, but in the passwd map as the 4th field. (Actually, a user's principal group can be listed in the group database, but usually isn't)

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% ypcat group | grep jeffy
se:*:30:bob,mary,mark,chuck,jeffy,fred,harry,homer,lena
pubsrc:*:161:jeffy,jrand,lgur
web:*:270:webmaster,jeffy,peteg,sally
dicom:*:315:ram,jeffy,david
shareadm:*:136:sysad,pcadmin,bill,share,root,jeffy
vxsrc:*:105:charlie,chuck,jeffy,steve,sam,vobadm,rick,lee

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hosts

The hosts database is a list of all of the host names registered in our network. The ip address is stored along with the hostname and (sometimes) a (usually out of date) comment. This is a backdoor way of getting the ip address of a given host. The preferred way is to use nslookup(8)

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% ypcat hosts | grep hugo
163.242.144.176	centauri  # (SW) SS2 Bob Jones old hugo
163.242.144.25	hugo      # SS1 Jeff Youngstrom

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You can see what I mean about the comments in that Bob Jones hasn't worked here in a long long time, and hugo is actually a sparc 10, not a sparc 1.

passwd

There are over 1000 records in our passwd database, so be sure to limit the output somehow.

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% ypcat passwd | grep jeffy
jeffy:*:1143:30:Jeff Youngstrom:/home/jeffy:/bin/csh

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