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When I modify /etc/nsswitch.conf, is there an "nss" daemon I should restart? I am not referring to modules such as mdns & nis.

3 Answers 3

18

No you probably don't (other than what David said, and maybe ypbind, but you said not NIS). The nsswitch.conf file isn't for a daemon in particular, it is actually a file used by the C library for various system calls.

25

You may have nscd (Name Service Caching Daemon) running, which you may need to restart, otherwise it's unlikely. Certain daemons might cache get*() function call results and may need restarting.

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    Well since my answer as accepted I have to give David the upvote :-P Oct 21, 2009 at 17:30
  • \o/ cheers. now I feel the need to upvote you for your generosity. Oct 21, 2009 at 17:32
  • Thanks guys. I can see that nscd isn't installed/running by default on Ubuntu.
    – jldupont
    Oct 23, 2009 at 15:24
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    That's probably a good thing. NSCD just normally causes more problems than it solves. :) Oct 23, 2009 at 16:26
  • Rather than just restart, you could disable the thing. I would restart my NSCD and successfully resolve host names, then a short while later, my resolution would fail. This happened consistently.
    – palswim
    Apr 1, 2016 at 19:32
20

Be aware that existing processes will not be aware of the changes to nsswitch.conf. The nsswitch.conf(5) page states, "Within each process that uses nsswitch.conf, the entire file is read only once; if the file is later changed, the process will continue using the old configuration."

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    So what's a person to do? Reboot? Nov 13, 2013 at 20:46
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    @Ken: Sadly, this appears to be the case.
    – Ron Smith
    May 2, 2014 at 21:20
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    Installing nscd and doing sudo service nscd restart && sudo service network-manager restart removes the need to reboot for me. Jun 29, 2017 at 17:10
  • Ubuntu 16: Failed to restart nscd.service: Unit nscd.service not found Jan 31, 2019 at 11:46

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