On Jan 20,  3:14pm, Luke Mewburn wrote:
} Subject: Re: nsswitch implementation questions...
} Greg Hudson writes:
} > Before adopting complicated schemes like this, I strongly suggest that
} > people consider whether /etc/nsswitch.conf is any different from other
} > configuration files used by libc (such as /etc/resolv.conf) and whether
} > all these extra considerations (do programs need to be restarted to pick
} > up changes, are we concerned about programs losing while the file is
} > being updated by an editor, do we need to compile the configuration file
} > into a database file to speed up lookups) are necessary.
} 
} > I believe the conclusion you'll come to is that libc should parse the
} > nsswitch.conf file at startup time and not make use of a db file.
} 
} Actually, I want to refute some of those claims:
} 
} - Solaris 2.x reads nsswitch.conf only on process startup. If you have
}   a system or daemon that you can't shutdown, and you want to change
}   the order of name service lookups, then you're in trouble. I've been
}   using Solaris 2.x in various kinds of production environments for >2
}   years now, and this fact peeves me. I'm not sure if the introduction
}   of the nscd daemon fixes this in Solaris 2.5

Something that we haven't been able to track down in HPUX 9.x reads
and caches /etc/resolv.conf.  We've found the if we need to change
name servers, then we pretty much have to reboot the machine in order
to make it happy.