Re: [tlug] NFS-mounting /home

[Matt Doughty <mdoughty@example.com>]

On Thu, May 16, 2002 at 08:40:46AM +0900, Bruno Raoult wrote:
> I agree with the "/home should be machine dependent, as opposed to user 
> dependent" statement.

I think that it is situation dependent, and the specific situation Josh
describes network mounting is a good solution.

> 
> The problem in mounting /home is that it prevents you so setup a 
> different way for special purposes:
> 
> 1) The real need is to share users home dirs. /home is a superset of 
> home dirs (not always as shown
>      in next points), not *exacltly* the users home dirs.

In many cases /home on workstations is only used for user home directories.
I have seen a number of environments where this was the case.

<SNIP>

> 
> In fact, mounting /home does not give you any freedom on setting-up 
> specific needs. On contrary,
> it is an assertion that "everybody has exactly the same needs", which, 
> maybe, I could see in my
> next life :-)

This is the case in any number of institutions with computer labs.  All
the machines are used for the same purpose. The main requirement is that
the user has access to the same home no matter which machine s/he logs
into. In this case just strait network mounting /home is a good simple
solution with several advantages:

1. centralized data for easy backups.
2. smaller HD requirements per workstation.
3. simple configuration.

There is really no reason to make things more complicated than neccessary
just so you have flexibility that you probably don't need.

--Matt

-- 
"WWJD?  JWRTFM!!!"  --  seen on /.