nis should recommend nscd
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
nis (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
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Undecided
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Unassigned | ||
Bug Description
Binary package hint: nis
In an enterprise environment, an Ubuntu user (administrator) installs the 'nis' package, for shared passwd and group directories, however, since the information isn't cached, against a busy or remote NIS server, performance suffers with very frequent entry lookup.
A simple example is 'ls -l', which stats every entry in a directory, causing a small storm of NIS requests everytime it is done on a directory with many different entries. Scale this up to an office with a few hundred systems, and the NIS request rate can be wastefully high, particularly on shared login boxes, which would see maximal benefit. nscd prevents processes sleeping for a non-local NIS response every time and is lightweight, and has appropriate record ageing/expiry.
Thus, the package nis should recommend nscd.
feature-freeze exception justification:
1. proposed changes:
-> have nis recommend the nscd package
2. rational/benefits:
-> ensure enterprise users with NIS, experience good performance through processes not getting frequently blocked (also causing context switches) for short periods (the order of 5-15ms, and causing unnecessary network and NIS server load
(ie why perform expensive I/O, when the result is available in a shared memory segment?)
3. risks:
-> minimal packaging-only change
-> affecting non-home/personal users