GENWiki

NSCD(8) Linux Programmer's Manual NSCD(8)

NAME

     nscd - name service cache daemon

DESCRIPTION

     nscd is a daemon that provides a cache for the most common name service
     requests.  The default configuration file,  /etc/nscd.conf,  determines
     the behavior of the cache daemon.  See nscd.conf(5).

     nscd provides caching for accesses of the passwd(5), group(5), hosts(5)
     services(5) and netgroup databases through  standard  libc  interfaces,
     such  as getpwnam(3), getpwuid(3), getgrnam(3), getgrgid(3), gethostby-
     name(3), and others.

     There are two caches for each database: a positive one for items found,
     and  a negative one for items not found.  Each cache has a separate TTL
     (time-to-live) period for its data.   Note  that  the  shadow  file  is
     specifically  not  cached.   getspnam(3)  calls  remain  uncached  as a
     result.

OPTIONS

-help will give you a list with all options and what they do.

NOTES

     The daemon will try to watch for changes in configuration files  appro-
     priate  for each database (e.g., /etc/passwd for the passwd database or
     /etc/hosts and /etc/resolv.conf for the hosts database), and flush  the
     cache  when  these are changed.  However, this will happen only after a
     short delay (unless the inotify(7) mechanism is available and glibc 2.9
     or later is available), and this auto-detection does not cover configu-
     ration files required by nonstandard NSS modules, if any are  specified
     in  /etc/nsswitch.conf.   In  that  case, you need to run the following
     command after changing the configuration file of the database  so  that
     nscd invalidates its cache:

         $ nscd -i <database>