[Macpartners] Re: MacOS 10.3 and NIS/YP Authentication

[vanni]

This is a follow up to a message that I had posted to this List
a while back.  Mostly for those that had replied expressing an
interested.

* the background
After upgrading (Mac OS 10.2 -> 10.3) users (that existed in the
NIS/NIS+ space ONLY) could not longer login. 

I posted in many places, but got no meaningful feedback except from
Marcel Bresink <marcel at bresink.de>, which maintains probably the best
WEB document on the subject  --> http://www.bresink.de/osx/nis.html

After few rounds, we were able to narrow it down to a bug in Panther
(OS 10.3)

* Conclusion
Panther has problems in dealing with certain NIS domains.
Specifically ... when the NIS domain name is
*.local the apple Directory Access breaks.  And NIS lookups
never get resolved properly.

I have tried dealing with Apple before, in getting them to fix
bugs and I did not find it to be a pleasurable experience.
Probably because, I did not have an inside connection, a direct
link to real technical person.

If you do and are interested in pursuing it further, 
please let me know and I will give more details (OFFLINE).

cheers !!

-vanni