Ansible role: ypclient

This role installs and configures the YP/NIS client that is part of OpenBSD and other BSD* operating systems. Currently, this role only supports OpenBSD, with the intent on adding FreeBSD and NetBSD in a near-future update.

Where applicable, this role refers to system documentation, e.g. the yp(8) man page.

Requirements

Operation

No external roles and/or modules are required to use this role.

Testing & Development

For testing and development, this role depends on the following roles and external tools:

• Role vnode.ypserver
• Vagrant (supporting either the VirtualBox or VMWare provider)
• VagrantCloud (specifically, the generic/openbsd6 box)

Role Variables

Available variables are listed below, including their default values (see defaults/main.yml). All of these should be implemented. If you find they are not, please open an issue in the GitHub repository.

Required variables

The following variables need to be set when using the role.

ypclient_domain: ""

Required, must have a valid NIS domainname. This is the name of the NIS domain that you intend to configure.

ypclient_servers: []

Required, must list the set of NIS servers for the domain.

ypclient_serverinfo: {}

Required, but may be empty if the NIS servers for the domain can be found in DNS or /etc/hosts.

If non-empty, this dictionary lists IPv4 and/or IPv6 addresses for the domain's servers. The role will then populate /etc/hosts with the required lines. If servers cannot be reached or resolved, the NIS code will hang. See yp(8) for more details.

The example below lists addresses for the master and slave servers in a dual-stack network.

ypserver_serverinfo:
  master:
    - "192.0.2.1"
    - "2001:db8::111:1"
  slave:
    - "192.0.2.2"
    - "2001:db8::111:2"

Optional variables

ypclient_usedns: true

Specifies that the YP/NIS maps can use DNS for lookups of host names. Recommended to leave at true . When set to false, make sure that ypclient_serverinfo and/or ypclient_set_hosts are set correctly so that your NIS servers can be resolved.

ypclient_lookup_maps:
  - name: 'passwd'
    file: '/etc/master.passwd'
    pattern: '+:*::::::::'
    validate: 'pwd_mkdb -c %s'
    notify: "regen master.passwd"
    mode: '0600'
    owner: 'root'
    group: 'wheel'
  - name: 'group'
    file: '/etc/group'
    pattern: '+:*::'
    mode: '0644'
    owner: 'root'
    group: 'wheel'

This list contains which lookup maps you want to use in the domain and which files need to be edited, as well as the pattern. Specifying the validation and handler is optional. Naturally, the maps must exist on the NIS servers as well. For other supported maps, please see Makefile.yp(8).

Variables to support multiple YP/NIS domains on a client

This variable is intended to allow the hosting of multiple NIS domains on a server. This was not the originally intended use case, so if you find issues, please report this as an issue on GitHub.

ypclient_set_domainname: true

Recommended to leave at true for the domain that is intended as your 'main' (default) domain name. Must be set to false if you want to keep another domain as default domain.

Additional settings

These variables are not required for role invocations and their defaults should be fine.

ypclient_set_hosts: false

If set to true, the role adds the IP information for the NIS servers to the /etc/hosts file. This is typically useful when the domain does not use DNS lookups (ypclient_usedns set to false). Note that this does require IP information for each NIS server in the ypclient_serverinfo variable.

Internal variables

These variables are used in the role internally and are not intended for user modification. Change these at your own peril. Typically, they correspond to hard-coded values on the underlying operating system.

Dependencies

None.

Example Playbook

Below is an example to create a simple YP//NIS domain client that connects to the hosts in the ypservers group. The domain is called legacy.

---
- hosts: ypclients
  roles:
    - role: vnode.ypclient
      vars:
        ypclient_ypdomain: legacy
        ypclient_servers: "{{ groups['ypservers'] }}"

License

MIT

Author Information

This role was created in 2020 by Rogier Krieger.