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Background: We are running NIS and have NFS mounts from a Solaris 10 workstation to a Solaris 8 server.

If the workstation loses its network connection for some reason, when I look at the workstation's console I see repeated messages of the form:

<date> <time> <hostname> ypbind[<pid>]: NIS server not responding for domain "<domain>"; still trying.

If I try to login at the console as a user, it won't work because it can't authenticate my account through NIS. Also, it won't return to a login prompt again, so I can't log in as root.

If I press the power button (don't hold it in) on the workstation, I see:

<date> <time> <hostname> power: WARNING: Power off requested from power button or SC, powering down the system!

Shutdown started.   <date> <time>
Changing to init state 5 - please wait.

<date> <time+2 minutes> <hostname> power: WARNING: Failed to shut down the system!

And continue to see messages of the form:

<date> <time> <hostname> ypbind[<pid>]: NIS server not responding for domain "<domain>"; still trying.

So, the questions are

  1. How do I make NIS stop trying (because I know it will fail)?
  2. Why won't it shut down?

1 Answer 1

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In order for it to do a clean shutdown, it has to successfully execute the shutdown scripts for all the running services. Unfortunately in a situation like that, some shutdown scripts are probably stuck waiting for the NIS server and will never complete. If you can't get the network back up, you probably will have to login as root and run "halt" to bring it down without waiting for all the shutdown scripts. If neither is possible, you may be stuck powering it down.

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  • In this case part of the problem is that I couldn't log in as root because the login prompt wouldn't return after I attempt to log in as an NIS user. Eventually I was able to reconnect the network and use it normally again. Anyway, thanks for your answer.
    – user36680
    Feb 15, 2011 at 17:56

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