A way of expressing nsswitch.conf configurations declaratively. This should cover the 15 basic databases NSS supports.

Currenly this module has support for RedHat, CentOS, Amazon Linux, and Ubuntu. This module at its very basic will create an nsswitch.conf that uses defaults derived from the distrobution provided nsswitch.conf file. These defaults have been verified on the mentioned Distrobutions.

So far, this module has only been tested on CentOS 6.x and Ubuntu 12.4.

Example nsswitch.conf with all defaults for RHEL systems.

# This file is controlled by Puppet

passwd:     files
shadow:     files
group:      files
hosts:      files dns
bootparams: nisplus [NOTFOUND=return] files
ethers:     files
netmasks:   files
networks:   files
protocols:  files
rpc:        files
services:   files
netgroup:   nisplus
publickey:  nisplus
automount:  files nisplus
aliases:    files nisplus

This is the class by which you will manage the nsswitch.conf file. There is one paramter per standard database NSS supports. The class accepts both strings and arrays as paramters. The benefit being, you could possibly merge an array of options with hiera. When using an array, each element should be the lookup service followed by the reaction statement.

Available parameters are:

passwd
group
shadow
hosts
bootparams
aliases
automount
ethers
netgroup
netmasks
network
protocols
publickey
rpc
services

For more information on NSS, please see the man pages. man 5 nsswitch.conf

# defaults only
include nsswitch

# setting a simple lookup
class { 'nsswitch':
  publickey => 'nis',
}

# 'hosts' lookups contain a reaction statement for the 'dns' service
class { 'nsswitch':
  passwd => ['ldap','files'],
  hosts  => ['dns [!UNAVAIL=return]','files'],
}