On Wed, Sep 10, 2003 at 10:17:17PM +0900, Noriyuki Soda wrote:
  | > 	(nsswitch itself is not thread safe, and
  | 
  | Certainly our nsswitch is currently not thread safe, but nsswitch
  | framework itself can be thread safe (see, Solaris, Linux, ...).

FreeBSD has enhanced the nsswitch code (which is derived from our
version) to be reentrant and support dynamic loading of back-end
modules.

I have been in communication with Jacques Vidrine <nectar at FreeBSD>
(who made the enhancements) about this exact issue, as recently as
"last night at the bar at BSDcon".

When time permits, I intend to integrate his enhancements, whilst
ensuring that we maintain API and preferably ABI compatibility.


  | > 	nsswitch is just for hostname lookup if i understand right).
  | 
  | Well, that's not right.

Yes, that is not correct.  It's also for username, group, and shells
lookup, and is flexible enough to support arbitrary other databases
such as "printcap", "automount maps", etc and arbitrary sources
such as "mysql" or "ldap".


Luke.