NIS ad NFS

[Robert Meyer]

> There are a few files with NIS that must be in sync on all machines. If 
> for instance there is a different password for a user on any box or the 
> users are in a different order NIS will fail. I'm actually trying to 
> learn how to use LDAP as an NIS replacment as it it suppose to work 
> better with M$ Windows (kids run half the time) and portable computers 
> (my wife notebook). No "rsync" to keep logon same across all boxes and 
> only one file to maintain.

I don't agree with this.  The point of NIS is to NOT have to maintain files
across machines.  I a well implemented NIS environment, the password files on
the local machines are never consulted except for system accounts like root. 
The NIS server holds the password database, the automounter maps for NFS, the
group map and a bunch of other things.  The client machines access this
information from the server for logons, etc.  You can even use NIS to handle
the host files and DNS lookups.  If you're having to maintain consistency of
files across client machines, something may not be quite right.

If NIS is running correctly, you can use SAMBA to authenticate the windows
boxes through NIS, too.

> As for NFS you do just mount it through fstab. However, anything in your 
> client /home will be inaccessible so move anything you have there you 
> need to access to a temporary place or back it up before mounting the 
> NFS partition as /home.

I personally like using the automount system for mounting home directories. 
I've worked in environments where we've  had a sufficient number of users to
have to spread their home directories out among several file systems.  Using
the automount daemon, when the user logs in, the system consults the
automounter NIS map to find the home directory and NFS mounts it on the fly. 
After the user logs out and the directory is no longer in use, it gets
unmounted automagically.


Hope this helps...

Cheers!

Bob Meyer

=====
Bob Meyer
Knightwing Communications, Inc.
36 Cayuga Blvd
Depew, NY 14043
Phone: 716-308-8931 or 716-681-0076
Meyer_RM at Yahoo.com

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