Re: [tlug] NFS-mounting /home

[Matt Doughty <mdoughty@example.com>]

On Thu, May 16, 2002 at 07:41:09PM +0900, Bruno Raoult wrote:
> My points (2) & (3) were typical of needs which cannot be covered by a 
> "global"
> /home mount. Even if /home is reserved for users dirs, it does not mean 
> that all
> homes *must* be nfs-mounted (a trader on Tokyo Stock Exchange and a 
> secretary
> cannot afford the same downtime, but they work in the same company, and 
> share
> the same sysadmin).

Yes and right there you have illustrated a completely different environment
with different concerns.  It sounds like you have an environment where 
every user has their own workstation. Your goals are to centralize data as
much as possible while allowing for needed flexibility per workstation. In
your case a strait mount of /home is not a good solution. In the case of
a computer lab with a fleet of generic workstations with a variety of users
a strait mount of home is both simple and very applicable.
> 
> I did not say home dirs should not be mounted. On contrary, in most of 
> cases.
> But a global and *unique* mount point is not good IMHO.
> I really prefer a per-user mount system (nearly as easy to setup as a 
> global /home),
> which could *also* give you a centralized server if you wish. You just add
> the possibility to do something different if you need.

Yes but your solution is going to require the use of additional services
such as amd. These type of services have been the target of various security
exploits.  It your basic security tenets here.  You just shouldn't run
services that aren't needed.  It is trivial to change over to an auto mount
system in the future should it be needed. 
> 
> We use NFS for home dirs, of course, but certainly not by mounting /home.
> 
> With the same idea, we don't mount a "/usr/local" dir where our added 
> apps are.
> It is also a "indirect automount map" in /usr/local/mount. With this system,
> we simply have the same dirs (e.g. /usr/local/sybase), whatever the 
> client is
> (linux, Solaris, with different versions of Sybase).
> 

These are all very good solutions to the problems you are dealing with. It
doesn't make it the best solution for all environments.  As I said before it
is situational. In your case a single NFS mount for home is a horrible solution.
In the case of a computerlab environment it is the perfect solution.

--Matt