/home on server

[David Abrahams]

Clive Menzies <clive at clivemenzies.co.uk> writes:

> On (07/08/06 12:23), David Woyciesjes wrote:
>> marc wrote:
>> > Hi,
>> > 
>> > I'd like to store all my users' home directories on a server - one 
>> > glorious /home. Hence, I will need to mount /home from that server.
>> > 
>> > I've done a search but not been able to unearth a doc that I can use as 
>> > a guide and, no doubt, point out some pitfalls that I haven't yet 
>> > considered.
>> > 
>> > Any pointers? Thanks.
>> > 
>> 
>> 	As an addition, I'd like to be able to do that with my wife's machine 
>> also, except that it's an OSX 10.3 machine...
>
> You can use samba in a mixed environment.  We use it with Debian,
> Windows and MacOSX clients.  Note for OSX clients one needed to
> explicitly share individual home directories rather than relying on the
> general /home sharing parameter in smb.conf.

On OSX, google "SharePoints," which will let you manage all your
shares and do things that you'd otherwise need OSX server for.

>     *  Edit /etc/samba/smb.conf 
>     (see   http://www.math.temple.edu/computing/samba.html)
>     * Change domain and create shares and test (smb.conf)
>     * Create smbpasswd -a for users

Watch out for Samba, though.  It's a Windows filesystem standard,
which means case-insensitive filenames, a different set of legal
characters in filenames, etc.  This can cause all kinds of subtle
issues if you're not paying attention.  I'd avoid it, except where you
need Windows machines to be clients of the shared directories.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com