nscd(8)			     System Manager'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 re-
     quests.  The default configuration file, /etc/nscd.conf, determines the be-
     havior 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), gethostbyname(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 appropriate
     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 (un-
     less the inotify(7) mechanism is available and glibc 2.9 or later is avail-
     able), and this auto-detection does not cover configuration 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 config-
     uration file of the database so that nscd invalidates its cache:

	 $ nscd -i <database>

SEE ALSO
     nscd.conf(5), nsswitch.conf(5)

Linux man-pages 6.18		   2026-02-08				 nscd(8)