Roaming user configuration

[Bastian]

Timothy Spear schreef:
> Hi,
>     I am trying to create a mixture of a thick and thin client setup on my
> network. Which would ideally also work with laptops. I would like to have the
> users home directory (which includes menus and everything else) roam with
> him/her as they switch computers.
>     As I see it, I have two choices. First xdmcp configuration. This means I
> need a large server and is very network intensive. Second choice, use a central
> LDAP and NFS mount the home directories and take advantage of the local thick
> machine resources. For laptops, I am thinking of a boot and shutdown script to
> update the designated user's profile on the main NFS server if a connection is
> available.
>     Does anyone have a better solution? Or has anyone implemented my second
> idea?
>
> Tim
>
>   
A few year ago I moved from NIS/NFS to Kerberos/LDAP/OpenAFS for roaming 
home dirs and a central user database in a mixed Debian /Ubuntu 
environment. The latter setup is much more stable and easier to 
maintain. It also supports easy replication and mirroring. I can 
recommend it.

I never pumped home directories from and to laptops though. They can 
access the network recources as soon ad they are plugged in (by using a 
utility like ifplugd).

xdmcp is too slow for playing movies, on my network anyway.

Bastian