Remote login error with gdm/nis/nfs

[John L Bartelt]

On a small internal LAN I have a server set up for NIS password/groups
and NFS to export /home. On client machines I have confirmed that NIS is
working and that /home is mounted from the server. I'm running Core 1
with all the latest updates on each machine. Users have accounts on the
server, not on the clients.

I have tried both gdm and kdm, but am unable to get a user login.
Failsafe logins work.

It appears that in the PostLogin/PreSession part of the X setup gdm
wants to write some configuration information in the users home
directory, but doesn't have permission, i.e. for gnome it wants to write
to the user's .gnome2_private directory. I'm guessing that the script is
running under the gdm user id, so naturally doesn't have the required
write permission.

Have I missed some configuration option?

I found a few references in the archives from others who reported this
problem, but never saw any solutions posted. This seems to be such a
widely used method that there must be an easy way to do it, but I'm
stumped and would appreciate any help or suggestions you can give.