Ubuntu
nis package

I can't install NIS in oneiric

Asked by Clay Spence

Hi, I recently upgraded to from 11.04 to 11.10, on a 64-bit machine. The machine is connected to a network that uses NIS for the usual things, passwords, nfs mounts, etc. My home directory is set up to be autmounted, which isn't working I assume because of the lack of NIS.

NIS seems to be gone in the upgrade, and the package manager can't seem to find it. For example:

clay@cholla:~$ uname -a
Linux cholla 3.0.0-12-generic #20-Ubuntu SMP Fri Oct 7 14:56:25 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
clay@cholla:~$ ypwhich
The program 'ypwhich' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install nis
clay@cholla:~$ sudo apt-get install nis
[sudo] password for clay:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package nis is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However the following packages replace it:
hostname:i386 hostname

E: Package 'nis' has no installation candidate

If I search with the term nis in the Software Center it finds packages that use nis but none that contain it. I searched launchpad and the ubuntu forums and didn't find anything related.

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Ubuntu nis Edit question
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Clay Spence
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Revision history for this message
actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

http://packages.ubuntu.com/oneiric/nis

Revision history for this message
Clay Spence (clayorama) said : 		#2

I see there is something about the package management system that I'm missing. nis is in the universe category, as is the synaptic package manager that I'm used to. The ubuntu software center has synaptic in its list of packages, but not nis. When I click on the install button for synaptic, it says "Not Found", "There isn't a package named synaptic in your current software sources." Yet synaptic and nis are both in the universe category, and "Edit > Software Sources" has "universe" already checked. apt-get can't find either package.

Sorry to be stupid, but software center's help didn't help me.

Revision history for this message
Clay Spence (clayorama) said : 		#3

So this seemed to have been a problem with the package management / update manager system. (By the way, I got an email from someone at launchpad with the text "Project: Ubuntu => nis in Ubuntu". I don't know what it means.)

From a suggestion on a thread on the ubuntu forums, I started the update manager, clicked the Settings button, selected the "Ubuntu Software" tab, selected "Download from ...", "Other ...", and then "Select best server". When this was done, I could install synaptic with the Ubuntu software center. I think the software center still could not find nis, but I'm not certain that I remember this correctly. Synaptic found nis, and I installed it.