Oh gosh, I deleted my passwd map

Oh gosh, I deleted my passwd map

“Oh my God, I accidently deleted my NIS passwd map definition from ADSIEdit”. We have faced many a similar situations in our life. Once you install Server for NIS, you get some standard maps. You have the liberty to create non-standard maps but the default installation of Server for NIS comes with a couple of standard maps. One of the biggest problems which we may face while maintaining NIS is if we accidently delete any of the standard maps definition.

Let me rephrase the problem which might happen. You open ADSIEdit and went to

Domain à CN=Systemà cn=RpcServices à cn=ypServ30, right click on any of the standard map say “CN=passwd” and click on Delete. However it will definitely ask for confirmation but many a times we tend to over look it.

Now your passwd map definition is deleted and as a result users are unable to login. How to fix this issue? Very simple, perform the following four steps and you will get your maps back:

1) Rename “CN=ypServ30” which is in Domain à CN=Systemà CN=RpcServices to anything say “CN=ypServ30_old”

2) Stop the NIS service.

3) Run the executable C:\WINDOWS\idmu\setup\niscnfg.exe.

4) Start the NIS service

Bingo you have just recreated the new ypServ30 container and it has all your maps definition. However you may need to populate other maps. I would strongly recommend to test the above workaround in your test environment before implementing on production.