firefox openoffice nfs problem

Tod Merley todbot88 at gmail.com
Fri Sep 15 09:19:50 UTC 2006


On 9/14/06, linuxlady2714 <ulist at gs1.ubuntuforums.org> wrote:
>
> I'm configuring ubuntu dapper drake machines for a computer lab.  When I
> log in as the sudo user I can run firefox and openoffice just fine.
> When I log in as a user with ldap authentication and mounting a homedir
> on a remote machine using automounting - the user cannot run firefox or
> openoffice.  The splashscreen comes up and just hangs there.
>
>
>
> Other gui programs work for the user.  Any ideas?
>
>
>
> Anne
>
>
> --
> linuxlady2714
>
> --
> ubuntu-users mailing list
> ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
>
Hi Anne!

I think we are trying to figure out what it is you are trying to do.
Kind of sounds like thin clients??  Probably not?

>From what you did say, I guess you are using disk space on another
machine (an NFS share) to facilitate many, many users on a particular
terminal (any terminal I suppose).

Lets take Firefox.  A showing of my "home/tod" directory concerning Firefox.
--------------------------------------------
tod at tod-desktop:~$ ls -l .mozilla
total 8
drwx------ 3 tod tod 4096 2006-06-20 13:30 firefox
drwxr-xr-x 2 tod tod 4096 2006-08-05 01:29 plugins
tod at tod-desktop:~$ cd .mozilla
tod at tod-desktop:~/.mozilla$ cd firefox
tod at tod-desktop:~/.mozilla/firefox$ ls -a
.  ..  h93gihtm.default  pluginreg.dat  profiles.ini
tod at tod-desktop:~/.mozilla/firefox$ cd h93gihtm.default
tod at tod-desktop:~/.mozilla/firefox/h93gihtm.default$ ls -a
.                bookmarks.bak   cert8.db           compreg.dat
extensions        extensions.rdf   key3.db         mimeTypes.rdf
search.rdf   xpti.dat
..               bookmarks.html  chrome             cookies.txt
extensions.cache  formhistory.dat  localstore.rdf  .parentlock
secmod.db    XUL.mfasl
bookmarkbackups  Cache           compatibility.ini  downloads.rdf
extensions.ini    history.dat      lock            prefs.js
signons.txt
tod at tod-desktop:~/.mozilla/firefox/h93gihtm.default$
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Each user needs Firefox and "crew" to be able to Read and Write to the
homes directory.  They must have permission to do so.  My first guess,
they do not.  There is also a hidden directory ".openoffice.org2" with
the same system needs.

For a better idea of what is happening, move the (Firefox or whatever)
icon to the desktop, right click and in Properties see the Launcher.
Put the Launcher command in a terminal window as the user and see what
happens (it will most likely show some error messages.  There are also
logs in /var/log with useful info.

You probably can get it all to work that way.  Have you considered:

# The Linux Terminal Server Project
http://www.ltsp.org/
# Orchestrated Specifically for the School Environment
http://www.k12ltsp.org/
# Wikipedias view of the above
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTSP

There are a lot of advantages.  You can start where you left off.  The
clients can be very thin (diskless indeed) and can do other things.
You could have several servers serving different Distros if you wanted
and it would all work well.

Well all this said and I really do not know what you were trying to do or why.

Good Hunting!

Tod




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