[CS-FSLUG] NFS Scenarios

[Tim Young]

Don,
I am not sure if there is a doc out there, but I can tell you how I handled it
when I ran a lab full of computers and 500+ users.

On the server we exported the entire /home directory to all the computers.
Then we served NIS off the server.  That is it.  All working.

What it does is this.  NIS exports all the usernames, passwords, directories,
groups, and UIDs.  All computers joined to the NIS domain authenticate with the
same username and password.  And they all get the same home directory path
given to each computer.  /home/username.  If the /home directory is exported,
then whenever anyone logs in, they get their files off the server.

This is the typical setup for NIS.  That and exporting /usr/local off the
server also.  Though on the newer redhats they have changed this to
/usr/share.  So any pakages you have on your domain that you want "installed"
across all your computers, you store on /usr/local/ (or /usr/share).  Now that
it is much easier with distributions to keep computes synchronized with the
packages you have installed, it is not quite as important to have the
/use/local or /usr/share directories exported.

Life gets a little more complex if you also have samba installed and are using
smb passwords.  There are a few good ways to do that one also.

Blessings,

	- Tim Young

Eduardo Sanchez wrote:
> On Saturday 06 November 2004 02:08, Don Parris wrote:
> > Is there a doc anywhere that offers information on various ways to
> > implement NFS?  I mean strategically speaking, as well as maybe even
> > an example or two.  For example, I would like to allow users on a LAN
> > to store their files on their computers, but public files in a public
> > directory, stored on the file server.  Given this scenario, I would
> > propose setting up thus:
> >
> > File Server: export /home/public with rw permissions
> > Workstations: import srv://home/public, and mount as /home/public
> >
> > However, if I want to have everyone store all their files on the
> > server, knowing that each user gets a home dir on their own box, how
> > do I manage this?  I'm taking a wild guess here, but...
> >
> > I would have to add all users to the server, along with their
> own /home/~user
> > I would guess I need to use LDAP (rather than NIS), but how to
> > configure the workstations so the users can actually login?  Obviously
> > the LDAP client comes into play.  While I understand how to implement
> > NFS in the first scenario, I would be lost trying to implement other
> > scenarios.  If I'm not making any sense here, just let me know. :)
> >
> > I have twice asked this question (not in this way) elsewhere, without
> > any responses - perhaps I was too vague.
> >
> > --
> > DC Parris GNU Evangelist
> > http://matheteuo.org/
> > gnumathetes at gmail.com
> > Free software is like God's love -
> > you can share it with anyone anywhere anytime!
> >
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