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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.

jldupont
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3 Answers3

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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.

David Pashley
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    Well since my answer as accepted I have to give David the upvote :-P – Kyle Brandt Oct 21 '09 at 17:30
  • \o/ cheers. now I feel the need to upvote you for your generosity. – David Pashley Oct 21 '09 at 17:32
  • Thanks guys. I can see that nscd isn't installed/running by default on Ubuntu. – jldupont Oct 23 '09 at 15:24
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    That's probably a good thing. NSCD just normally causes more problems than it solves. :) – David Pashley Oct 23 '09 at 16:26
  • Rather than just restart, [you could disable the thing](http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/273721/13308). I would restart my NSCD and successfully resolve host names, then a short while later, my resolution would fail. This happened consistently. – palswim Apr 01 '16 at 19:32
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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."

Keith Edmunds
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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.

Kyle Brandt
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