Implementing networked /home

[Reuben D. Budiardja]

Hello,
I have several linux (FC and Redhat) workstations. I am thinking of 
implementing a centralized /home for this workstations,using NFS. 
Authentication is done using NIS.  
I have several questions about how to implement this, and what's the best way.

Here are the options I'm considering:
1. On the server: export /home. On the clients: mount /home. I know how to do 
this. This should be the simplest.
2. On the server, export /home/user1, /home/user2, etc, thus for each user 
there is a "export line" for that user home directory. On the clients: 
mount /home/username whenever username login to that workstation.

What is the advantages or disadvantages of (1) and (2) ? I have seen (2) being 
used on some network (that I don't administer), so I am wondering if this is 
the usual best practice. Furthermore I'm not sure I know how to do (2). Is 
there a PAM module that do this ? I have also read that a lot of mount points 
can put heavy load on the server, so I am not sure if (2) is better.

Any suggestions, or pointers is greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
RDB

On Wed, Aug 31, 2005 at 12:39:20PM -0400, Reuben D. Budiardja wrote:
> Here are the options I'm considering:
> On the server: export /home. On the clients: mount /home. I know how to do
>
> this. This should be the simplest.
> 2. On the server, export /home/user1, /home/user2, etc, thus for each user 
> there is a "export line" for that user home directory. On the clients: 
> mount /home/username whenever username login to that workstation.

Actually, the answer is to do both (or neither).

What we do is put the real home directories somewhere else (like
/export/disk1/home), and export that.  Then you populate the
automount maps for NIS (auto.master and auto.home) so that whenever a
process tries to use /home/$foo, it is mounted from
$server:/export/disk/$foo.  This means that the setup is consistant
across all systems, including the nfs server.

[Reuben D. Budiardja]

On Thursday 01 September 2005 06:53, David Mackintosh wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 31, 2005 at 12:39:20PM -0400, Reuben D. Budiardja wrote:
> > Here are the options I'm considering:
>
> Actually, the answer is to do both (or neither).
>
> What we do is put the real home directories somewhere else (like
> /export/disk1/home), and export that.  Then you populate the
> automount maps for NIS (auto.master and auto.home) so that whenever a
> process tries to use /home/$foo, it is mounted from
> $server:/export/disk/$foo.  This means that the setup is consistant
> across all systems, including the nfs server.

Thanks. I guess auto.master and auto.home are what I am looking for.

RDB