When the NIS service is enabled on a system, the IPA server is automatically configured to set the NIS domain to the IPA domain's name, and to include IPA users, groups, and netgroups as passwd, group, and netgroup maps in the NIS domain.

If any automount maps are already defined, these maps need to be manually added to the NIS configuration in Identity Management for them to be exposed to NIS clients. The NIS server is managed by a special plug-in entry in the IPA LDAP directory; this is a container entry, and each NIS domain and map used by the NIS server is configured as a child entry beneath that container. The NIS domain entry in the must have the name of the NIS domain, the name of the NIS map, how to find the directory entries to use as the NIS map's contents, and which attributes to use as the NIS map's key and value. Most of these settings will be the same for every map.

The IPA server stores the automount maps, grouped by automount location, in the cn=automount branch of the IPA directory tree.

The NIS domain and map is added using LDAP tools, like ldapadd, and editing the directory directly. For example, this adds an automount map that is named auto.example in a location named default and for a server named nisserver:

ldapadd -h nisserver.example.com -x -D "cn=Directory Manager" -w secret

dn: nis-domain=example.com+nis-map=auto.example,cn=NIS Server,cn=plugins,cn=config
objectClass: extensibleObject
nis-domain: example.com
nis-map: auto.example
nis-filter: (objectclass=automount)
nis-key-format: %{automountKey}
nis-value-format: %{automountInformation}
nis-base: automountmapname=auto.example,cn=default,cn=automount,dc=example,dc=com

A similar add operation needs to be run for every map that is configured.