Re: tlug: NFS question

[Scott Stone <sstone@example.com>]

On Wed, 14 Oct 1998, Frank Bennett wrote:

> 
> I have what I somehow feel is one of those stupid questions that
> will fill all and sundry with a warm glow of satisfaction.  It's
> connected, again, with work on these student terminals that I
> hope to set up next year.
> 
> The design strategy (someone step on my fingers if I'm crawling
> in the wrong direction...) is to load processing overhead onto
> the terminals, and to centralize data storage and machine
> configuration details on the server.  The terminal machines will
> run Applix and Netscape and what have you, from the disk in each
> terminal.  Data, mail, and bootpd parameters will be stored on
> the server.
> 
> This will require that the user's home directory be in an NFS or
> other remote-mounted filesystem, and I just realized that I don't
> know how best to set this up, nor indeed whether it will work at
> all.

it will, I've done this.

> 
> Am I going to run into massive overhead by exporting /home to
> every terminal (there will be about 20 at the start, but numbers
> will grow; and there will be 300+ subdirectories in /home)?  Will
> this require that the /etc/password on the server is cloned to
> the client to assure that permissions are synced between the two
> systems?  Are permissions on an NFS-mounted filesystem going to
> be as easy to walk around as, thinking idly about the problem
> here at my desk this evening, I think they will be --- by hacking
> the /etc/passwd ID number or password on the client machine?  It
> all seems rather scary somehow.
> 

you do need to have identical UID/GIDs on all the machines.  Perhaps put
passwd in /home and have /etc/passwd on each machine be a symlink to it?
Same for /etc/shadow, /etc/group, /etc/gshadow if used, etc etc.


OR do an NFS-root type thing, which linux does support.  You could even
use diskless workstations.  I'd suggest a 100MBit network for this,
though, since that's not even very expensive anymore.

> Or is there another, better method of accessing remote data in
> filesystem form that I can apply here?
> 
> If the answers are complex, please feel free to just point me at
> suitable readings.  I'm happy to study, but don't want to spend
> my time reading up on dead-ends.

What you suggest is possible and relatively simple.  If you have
questions, you can ask me if you want to... I've set this up before,
although not optimally (with a 100Mbit connection) like I would like to..

--------------------------------------------------
Scott M. Stone <sstone@example.com, sstone@example.com>
               <sstone@example.com>
Head of TurboLinux Development/Systems Administrator
Pacific HiTech, Inc (USA) / Pacific HiTech, KK (Japan)
http://www.pht.com		http://armadillo.pht.co.jp
http://www.pht.co.jp	        http://www.turbolinux.com


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